


Not Your Average Threesome 'Verse

by codswallop



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2013-03-21
Packaged: 2017-11-17 14:45:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 36,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/552716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codswallop/pseuds/codswallop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which John and Lestrade begin to date, and Sherlock inserts himself into the situation in various ways. (Single-document version of all previously posted stories in this series)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. On Lestrade's Flawed Heart, and Other Slightly Damaged Things

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published here: [Not Your Average Threesome Series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/5799)
> 
> This is really more a 'verse of stand-alone stories exploring the potential dynamics between these three characters than a cohesive chaptered work. Still, here it all is. You may want to quit reading after the 3rd or 4th chapter if you prefer to see this version of Sherlock as entirely asexual and not involved in the physical side of John's and Lestrade's relationship at all.
> 
> Another short chapter or two may come along eventually, though I have no immediate plans for it. Thanks to everyone who's liked and commented on any part of this series in the past, on AO3 or elsewhere. :)
> 
> An audiobook by Lunchee of chapters 1-4 is available [here.](http://www.audiofic.jinjurly.com/not-your-average-threesome-anthology-audiobook)

"How long have you had that cough?"

Lestrade looked round from his desultory snooping through the contents of Sherlock's desktop, startled; he hadn't heard John come up the stairs. He'd come by with some crime scene photos for Sherlock--a nice grisly double feature, husband and wife, looked like your standard murder-suicide, but Sherlock seemed convinced there was something they'd all missed on this one.

"Sorry," he said, and cleared his throat. "Mrs. Hudson let me in. Sherlock around?"

John shrugged out of his coat and hung it up. "Bart's," he said apologetically. "Could be hours. Days, possibly. How long have you had that cough? Sounds nasty."

Lestrade hadn't even been aware he'd coughed; he'd had this low-grade yuck for so long it seemed like his normal state of being at this point. "Couple of weeks," he admitted. "Can't seem to shake it. Will you skip the lecture if I promise to stop by the surgery tomorrow?"

John laughed. "If you like," he agreed. "I'll hold you to it, though. Stay for a cuppa?" He didn't wait for an answer, but headed into the kitchen, bypassing various sorts of disturbing chemical, medical, and paleontological remnants on his way as if he didn't see them at all. Lestrade supposed you had to learn to ignore a lot in a household like this. He also wasn't at all sure he wanted to drink anything that came out of a kitchen frequented by Sherlock.

"All right," he said, against his better judgment. "Milk and sugar, no eyeballs, please."

"Mmm...fresh out of eyeballs, you're in luck," John called back. "Also, fresh out of milk. As usual. Sorry. What did you come by for, anyhow? Anything particularly horrible going on?"

"Not _particularly_ horrible, no." Lestrade followed him into the kitchen and leaned against one of the less debris-filled surfaces, feeling a bit awkward. It was odd; he hadn't spent much time around John without Sherlock and really had no idea what the man was like. Mild-mannered to the point of annoyance, he'd thought when they'd first met, several months back, but he'd come to revise his opinion. You couldn't possibly survive living with Sherlock for this long without possessing some sort of invisible steel.

Sherlock seemed to suck all the energy out of any room that he was in, though--it was hard to even _see_ a man like John Watson when Sherlock was about. He faded right into the furniture in comparison, quiet and brown.

To break the silence more than anything, Lestrade started to ask if John knew what Sherlock was working on at Bart's, but to his chagrin he didn't get more than two words into the sentence before he had to cough again--and then again, painfully, one of the deep, wracking bouts that had been making his nights miserable lately. He turned away, holding up a hand.

" _Really_ nasty," John said, glancing up from the teapot with a wince. "Getting better or worse over the past few days? Any fever?"

"Er...about the same, I suppose. Low-grade fever, off and on. Really, it's--"

"Nothing," John finished for him, nodding. "Yes, I know. Always is, with blokes like you. Look, you really do need to get that listened to. I've a stethoscope upstairs; get your coat and shirt off while I go fetch it."

Lestrade blinked. "Oh, that's--I mean, thanks awfully, but--"

John was already leaving the room. "Don't be an arse," he said offhandedly, turning back briefly at the door to give Lestrade a wide-eyed no-nonsense look. "I'm saving you the trip to the surgery. Coat and shirt; you can leave your vest on."

"Huh," said Lestrade, to the empty room, and then took off his coat, draping it carefully over a chair, and began unbuttoning his shirt. Definitely a touch of steel. He wondered if John bullied Sherlock this way--oh, he must do. Wondered how Sherlock took it. With a lot of spluttering, probably. The thought made him grin.

He wondered what John had meant by _blokes like you_.

*

It was unnerving having your throat membranes peered at and your neck glands palpated by someone you _knew_ , never mind while sitting on a kitchen table next to something that might or might not be a deliberate experiment in the stages of vegetable decay. Unnerving, and oddly intimate; John Watson had never stood this close to him before, he was pretty certain, not for any length of time. Lestrade could hear him breathe. His hands were warm and dry, his expression neutrally thoughtful.

"That's quite a heart murmur you've got," John said conversationally, listening. "Congenital?"

"Had an operation when I was eight," Lestrade said resignedly. "Atrial septal defect. No problems since. Yes, I see a cardiologist yearly, yes I'm very careful."

"Except for the smoking."

"I've quit. Mostly."

"Hm." John moved the stethoscope to his back. "When was your last ECG?"

"Oh...six months ago? Seven?" Lestrade was beginning to get annoyed. "I thought this was about my _cough_."

"Well, lungs, heart. Bit close together. All right, deep breaths?"

*****

John was on his second beer in front of the match when Sherlock came in later that evening in an explosion of muttered curses and damp outerwear. "Raining again, then," John observed, without taking his eyes off the screen, as his flatmate scattered wet droplets across every surface in the room.

"Brilliant deduction," Sherlock huffed. "How's Lestrade?"

John knew he shouldn't be surprised by now, but _Christ_ he was fast. "All right," he said guardedly. "He left you some--"

"Yes, yes, I see." Sherlock moved over to the desk, picked up the photos, tossed them down again with an exclamation of disgust. "Botched robbery. Housekeeper's boyfriend. Terrible cover-up job. Why does he waste my time? So you know about the heart thing now, then."

This was too much. John set down his beer glass, punched the volume on the telly down low. "Sherlock, you can't _possibly_...he thinks you don't...how, _how_ do you know about that?"

Sherlock smirked, draped himself onto the sofa, stretched his legs, and recited rapidly to the ceiling: "Crime scene photos on the desk, two tea mugs on the sideboard, your stethoscope on the table, Lestrade's been poorly for weeks. You're not an utter charlatan, so I presume even the most cursory examination would reveal the fact that he had heart surgery as a child."

"But--"

Sherlock stabbed one finger upward to forestall him. "Completely obvious, always has been. Keeps himself fit, but he isn't vain about his appearance, must be for health reasons. Has to be an old habit, because he neglects his health in other ways, has a bit of a death wish and a massive morbid streak, so: childhood illness. Checks his own pulse after any exertion, rubs at his chest unconsciously whenever scarring or scar tissue are mentioned--I'm only shocked you needed a stethoscope to make the diagnosis, John, I thought your deductive abilities had come along much further than that by now. Tea?"

"Make it yourself." John chucked a throw pillow at his head, which he batted away neatly. "You're not meant to know all that. He asked me specifically not to mention it to you--not that I needed asking."

"Of course, he thinks I'd make light of it in front of his team. Doesn't want them to see him as having any weaknesses, thinks it'd undermine his authority. It'd be very easy for you to put the kettle on when you get up to use the loo and fetch yourself another beer, you know. You were just about to when I came in."

John knew better than to ask how Sherlock knew that he needed to use the loo; there were some things he was much happier not knowing. "But you haven't made light of it to his team. Or told him that you know."

"I'm not utterly insensitive." Sherlock sounded mildly offended. "Besides, I have a soft spot for Lestrade. I hope he's not seriously ill?"

"You haven't deduced his diagnosis yet?" John asked sarcastically, but he got up and put the kettle on, figuring any display of personal sensitivity on Sherlock's part ought to be rewarded somehow.

"Of course not. I'm not a mind-reader. Nor a physician."

John was gratified by the admission that his own scope of knowledge exceeded Sherlock's in some areas, even if--he suspected--it was only a shrewd attempt to disarm him through flattery. "You are aware there's such a thing as _doctor-patient confidentiality_ , though?"

Sherlock waved a languid hand. "Irrelevant." He sat up and studied John for a moment; John folded his arms defensively, determined not to give anything away. "You're not overly concerned," Sherlock decided, flopping back down. "Fetch me my mobile on your way back from the loo, will you? It's in my inside coat pocket."

John shook his head, rubbing at the back of his neck as he left the room. He _wasn't_ overly concerned, though he'd no idea how Sherlock could tell. He'd sent Lestrade home with some codeine tablet samples and a strong recommendation that he take the next day or two off and follow up with his own doctor if the cough didn't improve. He'd felt dreadfully guilty about the accidental revelation of Lestrade's medical history, though; even if it wasn't causing him any problems currently, it was clearly something he was sensitive about. John could understand that. He wouldn't have wanted his old scars probed by a casual work acquaintance, either.

"Kettle's whistling," Sherlock called from the next room, and John finished washing his hands and went back out, absently retrieving the mobile on his way and tossing it to the puddle of consulting detective sprawled out on the sofa.

"I wouldn't worry about it," Sherlock told him, when John handed him a mug of tea (black, three spoons of sugar). "You were only trying to be helpful; I'm sure he wouldn't have let you examine him at all if he'd really cared about you finding out."

"I'm not worried about it," John said, and turned the volume back up on the telly. "Could we change the subject, please?"

Sherlock complied. He drank his tea; he offered observations on the football players' regions of origin based on variations and anomalies in their running strides; he wandered over to his desk and began typing madly on his laptop with one hand while simultaneously texting with the other. John drank his third beer, his fourth, and switched the channel over to a Hepburn-Grant film. He was about to drowse off in his chair when Sherlock spoke again.

"He _is_ rather attractive, isn't he?" he murmured, fingers still flying over two sets of keyboards at once, and John knew he wasn't referring to Cary Grant.

"Shut it," he warned, and closed his eyes.

*****

Nothing happened after that. Not for ages.

Lestrade spent two days in a blissful codeine-induced coma. On the third day, he returned to the Yard to find Sherlock, with Watson in his customary point guard position at his elbow, arguing heatedly with Anderson about how long it would take to murder someone using a paperclip. They were going toe to toe at full voice, the kind of thing you just learned to wait out unless you wanted to literally throw a bucket of cold water on them; neither of them saw him walk past. Watson turned and glanced at him, gave him a small, tight, smile, then turned back to interject his opinion into the argument.

Later on, he popped his head into Lestrade's office. "You look better," he said, and Lestrade said he was, thanks, much, and John gave a crisp nod and said he was glad of it, then jogged off down the hall after Sherlock. And that was it. Nothing at all had changed.

Except that now, apparently, he was going to start noticing John Watson.

Once he'd started noticing John Watson, Lestrade couldn't stop. Sherlock was in "constantly underfoot making a nuisance of himself" mode that month, and Watson was right there with him at least half of the time. Lestrade noticed that his silences had different tones to them, that he ordered his curry extra spicy, that he'd moved past the first stages of blind Holmes-worship and was capable of expressing sharp annoyance with Sherlock when provoked, and that his left hand almost never had that tremor anymore except when he was completely exhausted.

He noticed that he himself was actively disappointed on the days Sherlock turned up at the Yard on his own, and that John had quit looking at him _at all_ ever since that time in his kitchen, and at that point he gave up and cornered the man.

"We should go out for a beer," Lestrade told him firmly. "You and me. On our own."

John gave him one of those wide-eyed unfathomable looks that he was still figuring out how to read. "Should we?"

"Tell Sherlock you're going out on a date," Lestrade suggested, and watched John's eyebrows lift another notch or two--and then he laughed, not derisively but delightedly, and Lestrade realized he was probably already a little in over his head here.

He was almost certain John and Sherlock weren't involved--not physically, anyway; he'd have bet his life that Sherlock was still _married to his work,_ that was his line, wasn't it? _Flattered by your interest, but._ He wasn't sure, though, and he liked to be sure, so he asked John point-blank, nearly as soon as they'd sat down at the bar and before he had time to lose his nerve.

John dropped his forehead onto the bar-top with a _thunk_.

"All right, well," said Lestrade.

"What's your story with him, then?" John asked, after he'd picked his head up and shook it, and downed half his mug at a go. "You weren't ever...?"

"Oh, no." Lestrade frowned into his drink. "He did use to stay at my flat quite a bit, though," he added. "When we first met. It was...intense. In its own way. You know."

John didn't say anything, but his ears had gone a bit red, Lestrade noticed. He remembered how it had been: like having the full force of the sun turned on you and only you, blinding and burning and brilliant. Like living with a wild animal, something exotic with claws that couldn't possibly be kept, but you were so flattered by its notice that you had to try anyway.

"I really didn't ask you out to talk about Sherlock, though," Lestrade told him.

John's eyebrows went up again at the _ask you out_. "No?" He was smiling a little now, and Lestrade grinned back at him, shy and giddy. This might be something, this might actually be something, he thought, feeling a sudden lift in his chest.

His mobile pinged just then, and so did John's; they both froze and looked at each other in utter horror.

_When you're done canoodling,  
I need assistance with a box of ears._

SH

"Ears," John said blankly. Their mobiles pinged again, not quite in unison.

_Human ears. In salt.  
Romance can wait._

SH

"He's going to drive us absolutely bloody batshit," Lestrade said in wonder.

*****

Lestrade asked John round to his flat for their second...date, if that was really what they were doing here, and John was insanely nervous. He could gun down a man in cold blood--well, tepid blood, anyway--and giggle about it after. He could watch Sherlock take a corpse to pieces using kitchen cutlery just to prove it could be done, without more than a mild moue of revulsion over the fact that it was _his_ kitchen cutlery.

Dating, though. Now that was tough. He hadn't really done it in a while, and had no idea how any two people ever got from Not Snogging to Snogging. Did you have to _ask_? Or just start right in and hope they didn't pull away and leave you puckering into empty air? He couldn't quite remember. Alcohol helped, he recalled vaguely, so he'd brought a hopeful bottle of wine with him.

Lestrade was nearly as nervous as he was, John realized as soon as he arrived and Lestrade tried to take his coat, offer him a drink, and apologise for the state of his flat all at once. This should have been reassuring, but wasn't, not entirely; John would have liked _someone_ here to know what they were doing.

He needn't have worried, though. He went to set the wine bottle down on the kitchen counter, and when he turned back around Lestrade was right there, and the Snogging/Not-Snogging divide seemed to take care of itself without too much difficulty.

"I thought we might just get that out of the way for a start," Lestrade apologised when he pulled back a few moments later. "Been wanting to do it for ages now. You don't mind, do you?"

"Mind?" John blinked up at him. "I...No. I...actually, would you mind doing it again, as a matter of fact? I think...again might be good."

*

"You've got your mobile turned off?" Lestrade broke off to ask a bit later, panting slightly.

"Left it at home," John gasped. "Er...bedroom?"

"Please," Lestrade said, and kissed him again, hands sliding to John's waist, untucking his shirt. It was a while before they could break free long enough to stumble out of the kitchen and into a more appropriate setting. Though John would have been fine with doing it right there up against the butcher's block, too, he thought. It had been a _long_ time.

It was too urgent to be awkward, over too quickly to be fantastic; apparently they'd both been starved for it. In fact it took no time at all, once they'd gotten half their clothes off and Lestrade had shoved a hand down John's trousers--almost immediately John was clenching his jaw and burying his face in Lestrade's shoulder as he came, trying to resist the urge to bite. He cupped his hand over Lestrade's cock through his trousers and found it already pulsing, dampness seeping through the cloth and onto his fingers, which was somehow the sexiest thing that had ever happened to him, he thought dizzily. He wanted to slide down and press his mouth to the spot, but-- _really, on the second date?_ a part of his brain insisted, so he held back. For now.

"Sorry," Lestrade murmured into his hair, when they'd both quit breathing so hard and could speak again, hear again.. "I mean--not sorry at all, really, but...I have to say, I have absolutely no idea where we go from here. You?"

"Nope," John said, cheerfully. He was beginning to recognise in himself a demented fondness for situations that didn't go at all as expected, and this definitely seemed to fit into that category. "Shall we do the whole thing in reverse? Drink too much, watch a film, and then indulge in some awkward small talk about our families over dinner?" He started to sit up, but Lestrade caught at his shoulder, dragging John back down half on top of him.

"I'm not done with this part yet," he said seriously, and kissed him again. His fingers traced John's collarbone, encountered scar tissue, and he pulled back to look, frankly curious. John watched his face as he took it in, and then he reached out and ran his fingers lightly down the faint, neat white line that bisected Lestrade's chest.

There were a lot of conversations they hadn't had yet.

*

It was very late when John went home that night, around two, and he went right up the second set of stairs to his room and shut the door. Unwound his scarf, looked in the mirror. It wouldn't have taken a genius of any kind to see what he'd been at all evening, he fairly glowed with it: flushed skin, puffy lips, stubble burn, two--no, three clearly visible bite marks on his neck and jawline.

He went back down to the sitting room and cleared his throat. Sherlock was staring at a diagram of something on the laptop screen, something with a lot of branching lines: anatomical, botanical, or architectural, John couldn't tell. He glanced briefly up at John, then went back to gazing at the screen, memorising it probably, while making a lot of notes in a code-like shorthand without looking.

"Had a nice evening, then?" Sherlock sounded faintly amused.

"I really like him, Sherlock," John said, hoping he didn't sound too defensive; he only wanted to get it out there. It wasn't as if there were any point in trying to hide it, clearly. "You're not going to be difficult about this, are you?"

"Why should I?" Sherlock's right hand never paused in its flow of hieroglyphic scribbling, and his eyes remained fixed on the screen. "I thought the two of you might get on. I've no objections, as long as it doesn't begin to interfere."

John nodded, as if this weren't a completely insane conversation to be having with his flatmate at two in the morning. "All right, then," he said finally, and went up to bed, thinking _Interfere with what, exactly?_ for some time as he lay in the dark.

He'd had thoughts about Sherlock. Of course he had. Thoughts that, he was very certain, fell under the jurisdiction of Sherlock's _Not really my area._ He'd started off thinking of Lestrade as a sort of release valve, he had to admit--Lestrade had seemed an extension of Sherlock's world, a way to have him without involving him physically, perhaps.

He wasn't sure now. And he'd no idea what Sherlock really thought of it all. He suspected _Sherlock_ might not know what Sherlock thought of it all, which was worrying. All in all, perhaps not the best background for the start of a romantic entanglement--never mind that they were all three frequently involved in situations requiring teamwork and clear-headed acuity, with loss of human lives at stake.

Par for the course, then.

John Watson fell asleep smiling.

*****

Things progressed. None of them talked about it much to one another, but John began spending the odd night at Lestrade's place, keeping a toothbrush there. Lestrade tried not to think too much about where it was going; he was afraid of discovering that this was something he could no longer do without.

He woke one morning to find John's head resting heavily on his chest, and it took him a while to work out that John wasn't cuddling, he was _listening_. "Oi!" Lestrade protested, and flicked him on the ear.

"Ow, hey! What?" John sat up, wearing such a guilty expression that Lestrade knew he'd been right.

He tried to decide how annoyed to be. He didn't mind John knowing about his heart condition--John at least knew enough not to use it as an excuse to treat him like something fragile. Now that they were sleeping together, though, Lestrade didn't particularly want to feel as though he was constantly being diagnosed.

"Well?" he said finally, because John had that look he got sometimes during investigations, when he'd noticed something but didn't know how to bring it up.

"Nothing," John said. "What? Nothing. Just," he added, and then stopped again. "Well, I mean. There's still a hole? They weren't able to close it fully, when you had the operation?"

Lestrade wondered if doctors were, in general, attracted to broken and damaged things. Things they could fix. "It was the early seventies," he said finally. "They were still experimenting with patch materials. It's broken down a bit, but it's functional. It's fine. I'm fine." He was, although he'd been advised that he might very well have another operation to look forward to eventually, which he didn't see fit to mention just then. He got out of breath a bit sooner than he used to, that was all.

"So...no arrhythmia, no palpitations?" John looked as though he knew he was pushing it, but couldn't help himself, and Lestrade resisted the urge to counter by asking him what he'd dreamt about last night. There'd been yelling, not a lot, but some. He wasn't sure if John remembered.

"You could try giving me some palpitations," he suggested instead, reaching up, his fingers seeking out the back of John's neck, drawing him down. It didn't take much pressure to make John yield. Several weeks into this thing and John still seemed starved for touch, his hands restlessly trying to grasp Lestrade everywhere at once, pull him closer, _closer_.

"A morning exercise routine," John assented, between kisses, "is considered one of the major predictors of cardiac health." He began working at the drawstring of Lestrade's pyjama trousers, opening them, giving a little hum of satisfaction at finding him already hard, and if Lestrade had ever thought that he was getting too old to maintain this level of demand, he was more than happy to be proven wrong.

*

But it wasn't going to work, Lestrade thought later, a solitary and proper DI again, frowning out his office window. Not in the end, not for long. He'd watched John race around the city after Sherlock on this case or that; he'd read his blog. Lestrade had had five years to grow weary of being the occasional sidekick of a mad genius, but John was still in the first flush of it, in love with the mad rush of it all, if not with Sherlock himself. What could Lestrade have to offer him that could possibly compete with that?

Well. Certain things. Lestrade flashed back briefly to the warmth of John's belly against his face, the clutch of John's hands on his shoulders, his shuddering exhale, soft reverent curses. Breathless laughter. He shoved the memory aside, resolutely; there was no use wanting something so much if you couldn't keep it. It wasn't enough, it almost certainly wasn't going to be enough, especially not if Sherlock decided to play with the balance.

Which he did, soon enough. Lestrade came up to the Baker Street flat with John one evening, late--they'd been out, they were going back to Lestrade's place again, but John wanted to stop round and fetch a change of clothes first, and Lestrade went with him, because it was ridiculous to wait outside, and it wasn't as if he had any reason to avoid Sherlock, he did see him at the Yard all the time and after all they weren't _rivals_ or anything, not exactly--

John made a short, horrified sound and darted across the room, going down on one knee next to the pale fallen figure on the floor. Lestrade's hand was on his mobile, already punching the first 9, but Sherlock stirred almost immediately and tried to sit up. John pushed him back down with one hand, finding his pulse with the other, speaking to him in a sharp low voice--Lestrade, still hanging back in the doorway, couldn't catch the words, but Sherlock nodded and answered him in a groggy baritone rumble, eyes closed and face ashen.

"He hasn't _eaten_ ," John glanced back to tell him, worry and disgust fighting it out in his tone. "Not in a few days probably. He's fine, I think, but..."

"Right, well, I'll let you stay here and handle that, then," Lestrade told him, and turned and walked out. If it made him look unfeeling and jealous, he told himself, it was still better than how he'd look if he stuck around to give Sherlock a hard right to the jaw, which seemed the only other alternative.

*

_Angelo's, 1230.  
Apparently you need feeding._

GL

he texted Sherlock the next morning, and Sherlock, slightly to his surprise, showed up.

"That was a dickish move," Lestrade informed him, first thing.

Sherlock picked up the list of specials, his pale eyes flicking back and forth over the words for much longer than was necessary. "I do frequently forget to eat," he reminded Lestrade, glancing up finally. "It's happened before. I wasn't faking, if that's what you think."

The waiter came, and Sherlock ordered: soup, steak, salad. Lestrade shook his head when his turn came. "I'm not staying," he said, and when the waiter left, he added, "I'll buy your lunch, but I don't want to sit here and have a long heart-to-heart. I'm here to say this: I'm not going to play fucking games with you over John Watson. He's yours for the taking, I'm quite sure, if you want him."

"I don't want him that way." Sherlock looked alarmed. "I thought..." He stopped and looked out the window for a moment, then went on very rapidly. "You're good for him. I thought he might be good for you, too. I only don't want him to move out. But I meant him for you, too; I thought if we could--oh, _what?_ " he broke off in annoyance, because Lestrade's head was in his hands now.

"Sherlock, you can't just... _give_ people to other people! And you bloody well can't do it conditionally!"

A bowl of soup was set in front of Sherlock, and he began spooning it up calmly. "I think you'll find I have," he said. "It's an elegant solution to all sorts of things, really. You're going?"

Lestrade didn't answer. He put some money down on the table and walked out.

*****

"You haven't been out with your boyfriend in a while," Sherlock observed, apropos of nothing, a few weeks later.

John looked up from his novel, startled. He rejected the too-obvious _not exactly my boyfriend_ and the too-confrontational _what business is that of yours?_ and finally settled on, simply, "No. No, I haven't." He bent his head to his book again.

"Why not?"

John pretended to be too absorbed in reading to take immediate notice. "Sorry, what?"

"Did you..." Sherlock appeared to be searching for words in a foreign-language dictionary. "...break up? Is that what you say?"

John decided to play along. Easiest that way. "Hmm. You do say that. I don't know that I'd say it in this particular case. I don't know what's going on, to be honest. He's quit calling."

"Ah," Sherlock said. There was silence for another minute or so. Then, "Have you quit calling him as well, then?"

John put down his book. "Sherlock. What is this about, may I ask? Why the sudden third degree about my private life?"

"You don't have a private life. You have me," Sherlock told him, and John wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a joke or not, but it was undoubtedly true. "And it's not the _third degree_. I'm making polite inquiries. This is normal behavior, surely, between..." Again the mental rifling through the foreign lexicon. "...colleagues. Flatmates. Isn't it?"

His note of uncertainty reminded John that this _was_ , from Sherlock, a legitimate question. Possibly. He did occasionally wonder if Sherlock's total lack of emotional intelligence might not be, at least in part, a sham. It certainly seemed to let him off from a great many inconvenient social niceties--many of which he _could_ observe, John had noticed, when it was expedient to do so.

"I think," he said carefully, "that you made it fairly clear, not so long ago, that you'd prefer it if I didn't go out with Lestrade quite so much as I had been."

Sherlock looked discomfited at this. "I never said that."

"Said? No. No, you didn't," John agreed. _Went on a bloody hunger strike, yes,_ he didn't add.

"I only..." Sherlock got up and began to pace, picking objects up at random and putting them down again. John waited. "You could have him round here, you know," he said accusingly.

John laughed. "Oh, right. That'd go over well."

There was a flicker of something in Sherlock's eyes--hurt feelings?--but before John could be sure, Sherlock had turned away, crossing the room in three long strides. "Going out," he said. "Don't wait up."

"Sherlock, hey, I didn't mean--" John tried, but his problematic flatmate was already vanishing down the stairs in a dramatic swirl of coat.

*

He woke, sometime in the middle of the night, to find Sherlock crawling into bed with him.

"Oh God, what's wrong, what's going on?" he said, reaching for the bedside lamp, only about one-quarter awake. The sudden light blinded him, making his confusion even worse. "What's happened? Are you bleeding?" He reached for Sherlock, patting him down.

"No, stop." Sherlock grabbed his hands, holding them. "Stop it, John, nothing's wrong, go back to sleep." He switched off the light and pushed John back down on his pillow, then curled up next to him, spooning him. "Everything's fine," he murmured, and brushed his lips against John's neck.

John lay there wide-eyed for a moment, until he'd worked out that he was not, in fact, dreaming this, and then sat up, reaching over Sherlock to switch on the lamp again. "No, everything is not fine," he announced. "We don't do this. Or had it slipped your mind? No. Nothing slips your mind. Are you sure you don't have concussion?" As his eyes adjusted to the light, he looked carefully at Sherlock; his pupils were enormous, and he was breathing very quickly. John turned over one of his arms, gently. "Three, Sherlock? Really?"

"Five," Sherlock admitted, extending the other arm.

"Christ!" John began ripping the nicotine patches off and tossing them on the floor, no longer bothering to be gentle. "You're going to make yourself ill, you know that? What is going _on_?"

"I've worked it all out, though," Sherlock insisted. "I need you. You need a physical relationship. If it's not happening with you and Lestrade, it'll have to be me. It does leave Lestrade out in the cold this way, it's a flaw, I admit, but we can work on finding him someone else. Preferably someone with a medical background, he really needs keeping tabs on, but I'm sure--where are you going? John?"

John left the room and came back with a glass of water. "Drink this," he ordered. Sherlock obeyed. "You can't direct people's lives that way, you idiot," John told him.

"No?" Sherlock gave him an analysing look, and then leaned in, grabbed John by the back of the neck, and kissed him thoroughly. _Very_ thoroughly. John gave in to it for a reasonable amount of time, because, well, he had wondered. And also because it wasn't a bad kiss, technically speaking. Still. He hadn't realised just how much of a difference it made to snog someone who really, really _wanted_ to be snogging you. He might not have known, if he hadn't so recently experienced the other kind of kissing, but since he had, there was really no substitute.

"You don't want this," John stated, when they'd stopped.

"I would, though," Sherlock insisted. "Honestly, I don't mind. It was...quite nice. Really." He reached for John again, but John held him off.

"I _think_ that's very good of you to say," he said, "but...no. Definitely not. And now I'm going back to sleep," he added, because it seemed his best hope of escape. "You're going to spend the rest of the night in my bed, because I don't want to wind up feeling responsible if you die of nicotine poisoning in the night. Please stay on your own side and don't make me have to sleep on the floor." He turned off the light, walked around the bed, got in on the other side, and curled up with his back to Sherlock, as close to the edge as possible.

After a minute or two, Sherlock lay down beside him, not touching him. John listened to him breathing in the dark ( _still too fast, wonder how long he had all those patches on, surely he'd be vomiting by now if he'd gotten a lethal dose, never can be too careful though_ ). He thought he'd never be able to drift off again, but eventually he must have done. When he got up to shower and dress for an early shift at the surgery, Sherlock slept on through it all in a tangle of black curls against the white pillowcase, looking angelically peaceful and not at all like the demon of chaos John knew him to be.

*

He phoned Lestrade that afternoon and asked him to meet him for a coffee after work, not saying why. He didn't even have to say anything; when Lestrade came in and sat down at the table where John had been waiting, he got one look at John's haggard, plaintive expression and began to laugh.

"He'll be the death of me," John complained. "It's really not funny."

"I know it's not," Lestrade apologised, composing himself. "Honestly. I'm just glad it's not me. Imagine him five years younger and strung out on cocaine, if you ever want to put things in perspective."

John shuddered. "I don't know what to do," he confessed, and briefly explained what had happened the night before. Lestrade built small structures out of sweetener packets while he talked, and offered no comment. "It was sort of...pathetically heroic of him, I suppose," John finished.

"Or incredibly manipulative," Lestrade muttered.

"Yes, well, that too." John took a drink of his coffee. "But he's not, he's not entirely...he worries about you, did you know?" he offered. "Or, worries, I don't know if that's right, but...yes, I think it is, actually. I'm not sure he didn't set this entire thing up on your behalf, once he'd figured out about the, your-- _he_ thinks he set it up, at least," he amended quickly, because Lestrade was looking crosser by the second, and it probably wasn't the most judicious or flattering piece of information to have let slip, but it seemed like one of the more crucial pieces of the puzzle here, John thought.

It had probably been a very crisp little equation in Sherlock's brain, to begin with, he imagined. Lestrade, a lonely man, increasingly grey and breathless on occasion: John, a doctor, unattached and possessed of inconvenient physical needs: Sherlock, desiring to keep both of them close but not needing or wanting either of them sexually. All that had remained was to bring them together. Sherlock had probably even engineered that as well, John realised--noticed Lestrade's cough, sent him round to the flat that day on a flimsy excuse, waited for the rest of it to fall into place.

And hadn't had the slightest buggering _clue_ how impossible human hearts are to arrange, how resistant to outside interference.

He looked over at Lestrade and saw that he'd worked it all out as well. Probably a lot sooner than John had. "I don't need anyone worrying about me. And I don't need a _minder_ ," he complained, looking more and more like a thundercloud.

Right, really not at all flattering, was it, from his point of view. The not-calling-for-three-weeks was beginning to make all kinds of sense to John, suddenly.

" _I_ know that," he assured Lestrade, though privately he thought that the inspector could do with a bit of minding.

"It's damned insulting to both of us," Lestrade sulked. "Look, you're done with your coffee, I don't want anything--shall we go?" John nodded. He paid the bill and followed him out, followed him round the corner and over to his car. They got in, and Lestrade put the keys in the ignition but didn't start the car. He just sat there.

"Where are we going?" John asked eventually.

"No idea." Lestrade was frowning out the windscreen. "Why, do you have to be somewhere?"

"Not particularly, no." John had still been vaguely hoping that this would all somehow end with the two of them going back round to Lestrade's place, in fact, although that was beginning to seem a remoter and remoter possibility.

"You know that if anything happens with us _now_ , it'll be all part of his _plan_ ," Lestrade pointed out snappishly.

John squinted, shrugged. "Well," he said. "I suppose it could seem that way." He licked his lips, and tried not to stare at Lestrade's mouth; he hadn't ever realised what a turn-on anger could be, when it wasn't directed at him specifically.

"Oh _hell_ ," Lestrade said despairingly, and leaned across the gear stick to kiss him.

"There's nothing going on with me and Sherlock," John assured him breathlessly, when they broke off. "This. I want this. You. We'll work something out, I'll--and I won't try to mind you, honestly, I sort of just want to get you in bed and _do things_ , I've been missing this terribly, can we-- _damn_ this gear stick--can we go? Somewhere? Now?"

*****

So they ended up at Lestrade's place after all--the drive there was torture--and Lestrade was furious at himself about it, but there seemed no help for it, because John Watson hadn't entirely stopped smiling once since they'd kissed in the car, and there were some things which he was still powerless to resist. Even if it was all going to end very badly, which he still had to believe.

 _I meant him for you too,_ Sherlock had said, the cheek of him, as if he'd _created_ John, built him out of parts he'd scavenged from Bart's, no doubt, and Lestrade almost had to laugh at the idea, macabre as it was, because John was the very opposite in every way to anything a mad genius would dream up--he was so perfectly, blessedly ordinary, a miracle of ordinariness, in fact.

And yet not at all ordinary, either, Lestrade reflected, insofar as he was able to reflect while John Watson was toppling him down onto his bed and then climbing eagerly on top of him, hands busily working their way inside layers of his clothing. All the while still grinning delightedly, as if Lestrade was a Christmas present he'd been given to open. Ordinary, no, that wasn't the right word at all. _Human_ , yes, he decided, sitting up and stripping John's vest off him in between hungry kisses, pausing to press his mouth to the scar at his shoulder, endearing proof of his--oh-- _breakability_ , perhaps. Yes, very human, Lestrade affirmed, tracing the soft and tender skin with his tonguetip, feeling John buck and shudder against him. Very unlike Sherlock, who'd always seemed like something carved from marble, or an alien life-form, with those cold eyes of his, cold and calculating--

But he knew that wasn't true, too, he reminded himself. He'd seen plenty of evidence of Sherlock's breakability in the past, despite his apparent determination to ignore his human side, as if he could rise above it if he denied it fiercely enough, as if--

"Stop that," John murmured into his ear, and gave him a sharp squeeze that made Lestrade gasp. "You're thinking about _him_ , aren't you? Yes, you are, I can tell, and I have no desire to be in a bed with Sherlock Holmes in it--I thought I'd made that clear."

Lestrade gave himself up to the idea of that, for a white-hot flash, Sherlock Holmes in the bed between them, marble and ink, and their hands on him, their mouths. Would he snap out imperious orders, try to control the situation? Or would he, for once, submit?

John's cleverly darting hands soon brought him back to the reality of a less complicated and more attainable sort of pleasure, though. It was enough, really, more than enough: more than a cranky old sod like him deserved.

*

There seemed no keeping Sherlock Holmes entirely out of the bed, though. Even when they lay together afterward, in sated panting silence, he might as well have been perched on the footboard, commenting sarcastically on their technique. There would be no getting rid of the man, Lestrade realised, as long as he was with John--they were probably a package deal. He wondered if he could live with that.

"Would you move out, ever?" he asked out loud.

John looked very furrowed.

"It's not a dealbreaker," Lestrade assured him. "I'm only curious. I need to know what I'm getting into here, I suppose."

John gazed back at him for a moment, clear-eyed and unhappy, then turned his head away abruptly and spoke to the ceiling, spoke as if he were being forced to do it, as if he'd been ordered at gunpoint to reveal the truth of his feelings about Sherlock Holmes at all costs. "I don't think so," he admitted. "At least--not anytime soon. I think he's amazing. I do; I won't deny it. He's extraordinary. He changed my life. Saved it, maybe." He glanced back over and caught Lestrade's startled expression. "All right, that's a bit dramatic, but only a bit. When I came back from Afghanistan..." He trailed off, staring upward again. "There was nothing. I was nothing," he said, his voice flat.

Lestrade reached over and put the palm of his hand to John's chest. Neither of them said anything for a bit.

"I wouldn't make you choose between him and me," Lestrade said finally. His voice came out cross, but he hoped John had been around him enough by now to understand that it wasn't from anger. "I don't mean to do that. It's only...I've spent a great deal of time trying to distance myself from the train wreck that is Sherlock Holmes. I can work with him, just about, but...and honestly, John, I don't know that there's room for a third person in whatever it is the two of you have going on."

"Well, we'll try it out, I suppose," John said, sounding almost cheerful now. "You'll have to come round to our place a bit more, I'm afraid, but it'll be good, it'll be fine. We can gang up on him; you know he's easier to take when there's someone else there you can look to whenever he does something mad."

Lestrade considered it. "I will need a lot of beer," he said ponderingly.

*****

They went back to 221B later that evening. Lestrade's mobile chimed just as they got to the front door, and he hung back in the downstairs entryway--"It's the Yard, I've got to take it, sorry"--glad of the excuse, John would bet, but he was feeling too fizzy and warm from the sex to be anything but amused at this point, really. He bounded up to the flat door on his own and opened it to find Sherlock ripping apart the flat.

John's stomach sank, but then he noticed that the flat-destruction was apparently centred around a purpose: Sherlock was trying to stuff half the contents of the room, it seemed, into an overflowing overnight case of battered black leather.

"Herefordshire," Sherlock announced, not looking round.

"I'm sorry?"

"Herefordshire. Packing for. You were about to ask. A woman's contacted me through the website, appears her lover's murdered his father on her father's land, she thinks he didn't do it, I'm required to prove his innocence." Sherlock struggled with the zip on the unfortunate leather case, eventually applying his teeth to the problem.

"...Oh," John said, trying to parse that sentence in some way that didn't make his head hurt.

"Never mind. You'll catch up." Sherlock conquered the zip at last. "Damn. I've forgotten clothes. Well, you're a neat packer; you can let me have a corner of your bag, can't you?"

"My...bag?" John wished he could at least get his coat off and sit down before being thrown in at the deep end this way. "So I'm coming along on this one, then."

"Of course."

John nodded. Really, he couldn't even try to pretend he was annoyed, though sometimes it worried him that he wasn't. "Well, I'll have to--"

"Phoned the surgery already. Family emergency. Really, that uncle of yours, John, it's a dreadful shame the demands he puts on you."

John nodded again. "Right, then I'll just--" He glanced back to the open doorway. Lestrade was laying into someone on the other end of his mobile, his grating voice drifting up clearly from the hallway below.

"Oh, he's coming as well."

Lestrade came up into the flat, still holding his phone. "John, bad timing, I'm afraid, it's the most ridiculous thing, but I'm being called in to advise on a case in the West Country, of all things, and--oh for _Christ's sake_ ," he said, when he saw Sherlock. " _You're_ behind this, aren't you?"

Sherlock looked from one to the other of them, both scowling at him in the doorway with their arms folded, and broke into a pleased smile. It made him look about twelve.

"Rather unnecessarily, it seems," he said. "Still, it'll be a _smashing_ holiday. They're holding the body for us at the local morgue. Phone the hotel back and cancel one of the rooms I booked, won't you, John?" He tossed over his mobile. "Well?" Sherlock demanded, when they just stood there exchanging complicated looks. "What are you waiting for? Let's _go_!"


	2. Triangulations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which John and Lestrade pinch the bridges of their noses and sigh a lot, John is kidnapped for the fifty-seven-zillionth time, and Sherlock finally breaks.

The thing about going out with Lestrade whilst living with Sherlock--the thing he’d start with, John decided, if he were ever to try and explain it to anyone (which he never would, you’d have to be cracked, wouldn’t you?)--the _primary_ thing was this: To begin with, it was all completely intolerable, and then it went downhill from there.

At least, that was what he thought on the bad days. Sherlock and Lestrade bickered and quarrelled incessantly, over everything from proper forensics procedures to whose turn it was to do the washing-up. It seemed the only way they knew how to speak to each other was in a barely controlled yell of utter scorn and frustration. Which was only what you might expect. John had failed to take into account what sort of effect it would have on him, though, day after day. Trying to shout over them was futile; head-in-his-hands silence was simply ignored. Reasoning with them separately, after the fact, got him a lot of defensive “But you _know_ what he’s _like_ , John!” speeches and grudging agreements to try harder the next time, but yielded no visible improvements to the situation.

They all went out to a restaurant, once, because John thought perhaps they’d behave better in public view, but it ended in utter disgrace. Lestrade attempted to tell a lighthearted anecdote about a case he’d once heard of in which the killer had baked the murder weapon into a loaf of bread, and Sherlock was onto it like a bloodhound.

“What sort of bread?”

Lestrade rolled his eyes. “ _I_ don’t know. What does it matter? It’s only a--”

“It’s only _ludicrous_ , completely impractical at best, patently unfeasible at worst. Now, if the bread itself had been the murder weapon...but even so, that’s hardly innovative. Why bother repeating such a ridiculous story, if you can’t even--”

“Oh, for-- It’s dinner conversation, Sherlock!” Lestrade snapped.

“Yes, _in hell,_ ” John said under his breath.

Broken glasses, overturned furniture, and managerial intervention had ensued--or so John gathered, later on. He’d got up and left when the yelling had begun, just walked out of the restaurant without a look or a word to either of them, hailed a cab, and went to spend the night at Harry’s, where he was reasonably sure no one would come looking for him. He must have looked rough, because Harry didn’t even ask any questions, just poured him a very large neat whisky and set about making up a bed for him on the sofa. He left very early the next morning, though, not wanting to push his luck.

There were twenty-seven text messages on his mobile when he turned it on. Twenty-five from Sherlock, which he deleted without opening, and two from Lestrade.

_Sorry. Call me.  
GL_

about an hour after he’d left the restaurant, and then, at three in the morning,

 _On second thoughts, don’t call._  
We both deserve flogging.  
GL

John wondered if Lestrade had got his habit of initialling his texts from Sherlock, or vice versa. He texted back:

 _Excellent idea, I’ll borrow his riding crop._  
Punishment will commence at 1900 hours,  
after I’ve finished giving flu jabs to the elderly.  
Your place.

Lestrade was in the middle of cooking something complicated and French when John turned up at his flat that evening. “Nice,” John said, sniffing appreciatively as he came into the kitchen.

“Well. Least I could do,” Lestrade handed him a glass of wine, looking sheepish.

John took a swallow. “ _Very_ nice.” He put the glass down on the worktop and came over to stand behind Lestrade at the stove, wrapping an arm around his waist and nipping him on the ear. “So you think you can escape punishment this way, do you?”

Lestrade put down his spoon and turned around. “What, you were serious about that?” He sounded disbelieving, but interested; kinky floggings had never exactly been on their agenda before.

“Completely serious,” John said, and kissed him.

“Hmm.” Lestrade reached behind himself to turn off the burners. “You didn’t actually bring the riding crop?”

“No,” John admitted. “Not really my style. I do intend to punish you, though.” He steered Lestrade over to one of the kitchen chairs and pushed him down to a sitting position, leaning over to kiss him again.

“Do you now?” Lestrade sounded lazily unconcerned. “How’s that, then?”

John reached into his jacket pocket. “Flu jab,” he said triumphantly. “Roll up your sleeve.”

*

“I bloody _hate_ needles, you know that," Lestrade complained, still grimacing as John finished off and affixed a Winnie-the-Pooh plaster to his arm. (“All we had in stock,” John claimed. “Unless you’d rather have had Disney princesses?”) He rotated his shoulder. “God, that hurts. I’d rather have had the riding crop.”

"Look at it this way,” John said cheerfully. “I saved you nearly all the anticipation of it. Did you a favour, really."

"You didn't. I wasn't going to have a flu jab at all."

"Oh, yes, you were."

"Wasn't. _Doctors,_ God, you're insufferable, the lot of you. How in the hell did I end up going out with one?"

“Shall I show myself out, then?” John offered.

“Right after I’ve finished with you, yes.” Lestrade very suddenly twisted a hand into the neck of his jumper and yanked him close, pulling John in to straddle his lap, and John’s breath caught in his throat. He still wasn’t used to the dizzying suddenness with which Lestrade could sometimes turn rough and physical. John shut his eyes and leaned into the kiss, bracing himself with one hand against the table, wondering if they’d manage to get it on in the chair this time or if they’d topple over onto the floor--cold tiles, he thought, shivering, remembering previous encounters in this kitchen--

“Bedroom,” Lestrade murmured into his mouth, somehow managing to not quite break the kiss as he stood up and started backing John out of the room. “I want it slow. You on top. Make me beg. That’s the sort of punishment I like. Are you up for it?”

“I...well, yes,” said John. “God. Feel free to scrap with Sherlock all you like from now on, if this is the result. Do you--are we ruining your dinner, though, do you want to--right, never mind about that, never mind--”

*

The conversation with Sherlock was more difficult.

“I didn’t read your texts,” John told him, when he went home that night. “Deleted them all, in fact.”

“Did you?” Sherlock, dressing-gowned and sofa-bound, fingers steepled, hadn’t so much as glanced over when he’d come into the room. “No matter. Case-related. Solved it on my own. The skull was an adequate substitute. Are you going to the shops anytime soon?”

“No,” John said, and waited. “No apology?” he prompted eventually.

“Apology?” Sherlock’s brow creased, briefly. “What for? Oh. The restaurant. Mm...no, I don’t think so.”

“Really,” John said. “Really? Wow. No?”

Sherlock did glance at him finally, a quick calculating once-over, then gave a dismissive head-shake and went back to contemplating the wallpaper. “No. You enjoy it. You like the proximity of conflict. You even enjoy being fought over, in a way; it makes you feel valued.”

John tried to decide if this were in any way true. “No, I’m pretty sure it makes me want to move out and find a flatmate who won’t bait my boyfriend at every possible opportunity.”

Sherlock smirked. “Why did you come home tonight, then?”

John stood there wondering what would happen if he started throwing things at him, and then he shook his head.

“Unbelievable,” he said, and went upstairs.

About an hour later, as John was just dropping off to sleep over his book, his door creaked open. The hinges had needed oiling for some time; at one point he’d meant to get around to it, but then he’d realized it was a useful and necessary alarm system.

Sherlock lounged in his doorway like some sort of...large, lounging thing, John thought with irritation. Catlike, the way he claimed every space in the flat simply by draping himself all over it and refusing to budge. John had never been fond of cats.

“You want me to try and get along with Lestrade,” Sherlock mused.

“In an ideal world, yes,” John agreed, somewhat guardedly.

“All right,” Sherlock said, and vanished.

John lay awake for another hour after that, wondering why this was the most worrying thing to happen yet. Eventually he had to get up and take a sleeping pill.

*****

It was nice, Lestrade had to admit, having sex on a regular basis again. It was extremely nice having sex with someone like John Watson, who turned out to be extraordinarily enthusiastic about it, as well as being completely down-to-earth, open, emotionally mature, and level-headed. Really, what were the odds? It would have been too perfect, probably, except. Well. Except for the fact that he didn’t exactly come with no strings attached.

He came with a whole damned _orchestra_ attached.

Perhaps it was for the best, Lestrade tried to tell himself. It wasn’t as though John Watson wasn’t as fucked-up as the next person. A lot more fucked-up, he suspected sometimes. But John seemed to channel all his fucked-upness into whatever it was he had going on with Sherlock, leaving the good parts for Lestrade.

And how could you complain about that? It should have been fantastic, shouldn’t it? Why not let Sherlock have all the difficult parts of John’s psyche and welcome to them? Why, in God’s name, should Lestrade feel jealous of Sherlock on that account?

They ought to go in for couples’ therapy, Lestrade thought. Or whatever you’d call it when there were three of them. Now that would be a comedy. Alone in his office, imagining it, he let out a rusty laugh.

At the sound, Sherlock appeared in his doorway as if summoned. From the depths of whatever unholy plane he normally existed on, Lestrade thought sourly. “How did I end up saddled with you for the rest of eternity?” he asked, as Sherlock came right into the room without invitation and settled himself on the edge of his desk.

“I could say the same,” Sherlock told him, picking over the contents of the desktop with one sweeping, incisive look and probably solving three or four cases on his way to glancing up at Lestrade’s face. “Would you have left me to get on with freezing to death in that unheated flat in Kilburn if you’d known? Anyway, too late now. I’ve come to ask for your help on a case. I know, I know,” he added, in response to Lestrade’s look of total disbelief, and made an elegant dismissive gesture. “I don’t _need_ your help, clearly. But John’s at work, you’re obviously not doing anything, and I could always do with someone to hold things for me while I investigate. You’re terrible at it, far too many unhelpful comments, but, at a pinch, you’ll do.”

Lestrade rolled his eyes. “Oh, brilliant offer. How can I possibly refuse? And yet.”

“It’s an interesting case, and you’re bored to tears here,” Sherlock informed him. “Also, there’s this: You and I need a different venue in which to vent our frustrations with each other.”

Lestrade opened his mouth and then shut it again. “You’re suggesting we...what? Go off and argue over casework to get it out of our systems?” he said finally. “So we’ll argue less in front of-- But that’s--”

“Worth a try, don’t you think?” Sherlock unfolded himself from his perch on the desk. “We can only kill each other if it doesn’t work. Or he might--one of us anyway, I shouldn’t wonder. He’s a crack shot; better not to risk it, really.” He walked out, turning back at the door to say “Well, come along, then,” impatiently, and then whisking off down the hall.

“God help me,” Lestrade muttered, and followed.

*

It was, in fact, an interesting case. It also happened to be one with which Lestrade was already well acquainted. “The _McFarlane case_? You’re not poking around that again, Sherlock, it’s done and dusted. He’s guilty! There are fingerprints! How can you argue with fingerprints?”

Sherlock gave him an arch, infuriating look, and proceeded to prove McFarlane’s innocence by setting a house on fire. A house which turned out to be a good deal more inflammable than either of them might have suspected. Lestrade ended up making his statement to the press from the burns unit at Chelsea & Westminster, where he was treated for minor injuries and smoke inhalation. He managed to escape an overnight stay, but only just.

John was unamused. “I thought the entire point of setting me up with Lestrade in the first place was to make sure he took better care of himself,” he told Sherlock, scowling critically at the dressing on Lestrade’s arm once they’d finally all made it back to Baker Street late that night. “Doesn’t dragging him into burning buildings rather defeat the purpose?”

“Oh, sod that,” said Lestrade. “It was brilliant, John, you should have been there. The look on that old bastard’s face!” He’d forgotten how exciting it could be, how thrilling, even, to get swept up in Sherlock’s mad wake. He’d been so ground down and stifled by the sheer bureaucracy of his job--and you had to, after nearly thirty years in the force, you had to go a bit numb or you’d never survive--but _this_ , this was why they were all in it, this was what it was about: throwing out all the rules and just doing it, _catching criminals_. Orthodox methods be damned. “Brilliant,” he repeated, grinning up at Sherlock with the dazzling force of revelation. “How did you know he’d be holed up in there? I didn’t quite catch it. Go over it again.”

“What in the hell did they give him?” John demanded of Sherlock, who was very studiously updating his web page.

“Whatever it is, can you prescribe me some more of it?” Lestrade asked. “I feel _amazing_.”

“Oxygen, mainly,” Sherlock said absently. “I believe.”

“He’s as high as a fucking kite,” John protested.

“What, you don’t get like this after a chase?” Lestrade asked him. “You do. I’ve seen you. Why should you get to have all the fun? All right, there may also have been some opiates involved. Something ending with an -ine. Or -one. You talked to them at the hospital, didn’t you? You didn’t ask?”

“No, I was a bit distracted by being terrified to death,” John sighed. “No matter. We should get you up to bed.”

“Oh, yes _please_ ,” said Lestrade, then, “Oh, look, I love that, when your ears go all red at the tips like that. Are you-- _and_ your neck, it’s adorable. Sherlock, look--does he ever do this for you?”

“I blame you entirely,” John told Sherlock, sounding somewhat strangled. “I hope you’re sufficiently entertained?”

“Quite,” said Sherlock, who seemed to be trying not to laugh. “Don’t mind me.” John gave him a quelling glare as he pulled Lestrade up off the sofa and out of the room.

*****

It was better after that, for a while, in its odd way. Sherlock made a point of involving Lestrade in more of the cases he took on, and John made a point of not having anything much to say about it--he knew he’d be a hypocrite to wish Lestrade back behind the safety of a desk more often and out of the line of fire. Lestrade made a point of coming round to spend the night at 221B at least once or twice a week; there were still arguments, but they seemed to grow more amicable, somehow.

So things were going along okay, really, until John had to go and fuck it all up entirely by getting himself kidnapped again.

*

He ought to be an old hand at this by now, John thought. This was, what, the fourth time? Fifth? Apparently, sharing a flat with Sherlock Holmes was tantamount to walking around London with a large sign that said KIDNAP ME taped to the back of one’s jacket.

Whoever was behind this one was refreshingly professional about it, at any rate. One minute he’d been walking to work, the next there’d been a bag over his head and a sharp pinprick in his neck--pentobarbital, he thought, when he came out of it enough to be able to think again. Dosage appropriate to his weight, which he appreciated, really.

He woke up in total darkness, which was always frankly terrifying, but at least he wasn’t bound or gagged or injured, so that was something, and after a bit he was able to feel around and determine that he was probably in a cargo storage container somewhere, the corrugated metal kind used for transport. Completely empty, save for three items, which he was easily able to identify by touch: a case of bottled water, a box of energy bars, and a plastic bucket.

So his kidnappers meant to keep him alive, whoever they were. That was...comforting.

They also apparently meant to keep him for some time.

Not so comforting.

He wondered who’d find out he was missing first, and how they’d react, and _that_ was the thought that made him turn a little shaky, sweat breaking out on his face as he sank to the floor. “They’re going to kill each other,” John predicted, and shivered at the sound his voice made bouncing off the metal walls.

*****

For the first two days of it, Lestrade felt amazingly sharp and professional and in-control. This was something he was good at, after all: dealing with bad situations, putting his feelings aside. He avoided the eyes of his staff members, closed the door of his office, and had a very rapid-fire, very focused conversation with a paler-than-usual Sherlock, from which he emerged feeling confident that the situation would all be resolved within a few hours at most.

On the third day, the lack of food and sleep began to catch up with him.

On the fourth, he went ballistic on Anderson, spectacularly, in front of the entire team.

The fifth day, his DCI took him off the case and sent him home.

The fistfight with Sherlock happened on the sixth day, or was it the seventh?

Days eight to ten were extremely hazy in his memory. He only meant to have one drink to take the edge off, two at most. But after a while there seemed little point in staying sober--there was nothing he could _do_ , and even if alcohol didn’t kill the pain, it at least changed the frequency for a while.

On the eleventh day, Lestrade awoke at three in the afternoon with a massive hangover to find his mobile buzzing.

 _Nothing conclusive yet_  
Come to 221B if sober  
SH

He pulled himself together, cleaned himself up, and went round to Baker Street, where he used the key John had given him and walked into the flat to find Sherlock sitting at the kitchen table eating toast.

“Nice work if you can get it,” Lestrade said. “I thought you never ate when you were on a case.”

“On cases that stretch on for over a week, I’ve found that a minimal intake of carbohydrates is necessary to promote brain activity and prevent physical collapse,” Sherlock informed him. He did, at least, have the decency to look completely terrible. He was still wearing the same shirt as he’d had on on the fistfight day, Lestrade thought; there were bloodstains on the collar.

“You think he’s still alive?” It was horrifically blunt, but it was the only thing on Lestrade’s mind, clearly the only question in the world of any importance, and there was no point beating around the bush at this stage.

“I’m almost sure of it,” Sherlock said. "Sit down," he added sharply, and Lestrade did, almost involuntarily, his head spinning. “You’re worse than useless. I shouldn’t have contacted you, you’ll only muddle me, but I thought you deserved to know. I’m onto a lead at last. A good one, I think.”

“So you came back here to enjoy some toast.”

“I’m going to need the energy,” Sherlock snapped. “They’re not just going to hand him over. Their entire point is to keep him as long as possible, try and break me down.”

“Who’s _they_?” Lestrade had forgotten how dreamlike Sherlock Holmes’s world could be. He dealt with criminals every day, but only the prosaic kind. Sherlock’s villains were the weird ones, the ones out of trashy novels, so theatrical you couldn’t believe they were serious.

“The two younger brothers of a man I put in prison eight years ago.” Sherlock got up and went over to his desk, clicked on an email. “Who now wield a fair amount of power in a local smuggling ring. They’ve sent me a message, here, look--” Lestrade came over to read it. _‘How do you like having your loved ones taken away from you mister holmes, not much fun is it’_ “Anonymous, of course,” Sherlock went on. “But I traced the IP address and did a bit of legwork while you were busy ransacking every last bottle in your drinks cabinet. You _reek_ of crème de menthe, incidentally, it’s beyond pathetic. Anyway. I believe I can catch them in one of their areas of operation later this evening, but not until after six. _Put down your phone._ I will not have the police involved.”

“You’ll bloody well have this member of the police involved. As you must know, or you wouldn’t have told me all that.”

“I could use a bit of backup,” Sherlock admitted. “If you’re up to it.” He gave Lestrade a long hard look, clearly trying to decide whether a middle-aged wreck of a distraught DI with a heart condition was going to be more of a liability than an asset. “You have proven yourself fighting-fit recently,” Sherlock conceded finally. He rubbed at his jaw, which was black and blue under the growth of stubble, Lestrade noticed now with a mean little burst of satisfaction. “I only hope you can keep your emotions in check and not go flying off the handle. Can you, do you suppose?”

Lestrade hated him for asking, hated him for being so cold, hated him for causing this entire horror to happen in the first place. He knew from years of working with him, though, that Sherlock’s insane methods nearly always yielded results, and quickly. His success rate was certainly a hell of a lot higher than Scotland Yard’s.

“It’s only four-thirty now,” he said finally. “You’ve got time to help me tidy up around here before we leave. John’s going to be livid when he comes home to find nicotine-patch wrappers and toast crusts lying around everywhere.”

*

It was almost easy, in the end, after all that. Do the washing-up, take a cab to a South London storefront and beat two weedy-looking smugglers to within an inch of their lives. Take another cab to an unused loading dock in Park Royal and use a crowbar to break into a rusted yellow storage container. Lestrade was the one to do the honours with the crowbar, because Sherlock’s hands were suddenly shaking so much that he dropped it--the first real indication in eleven days that he wasn’t made of stone. Lestrade might have been impressed if his attention hadn’t been otherwise occupied. Sherlock was the one to dart inside as soon as the blasted thing was open, because Lestrade hadn’t the courage; he was more than half certain they’d find a corpse inside. He closed his eyes and leaned against the cold corrugated metal. He could hear the ambulance siren, already on its way, he’d radioed for one as soon as they’d got the location, but it was going to be too late, of course, days too late probably--

Sherlock made a strangled sound, and Lestrade’s police instincts finally took over. Without even meaning to move, he was inside the door before he knew it, flashlight beam shaking all over the place and then finally illuminating two figures struggling in the shadows: Sherlock on his knees with an arm around his throat and a glinting shard of plastic aimed at his jugular, John with his teeth bared, snarling, barely human. Lestrade never knew what it was that he yelled out, it didn’t even have _words_ , so far as he knew, but it made John stop and release his grip at once.

“Lestrade?” he said, hoarse, squinting against the light. “Oh, fuck-- _Sherlock?_ Took you long enough, you wankers.” And then Sherlock was _laughing_ , sounding unbelievably human and breathless and relieved.

*

So everything was all right. John was all right, physically anyway, not a scratch on him, and they’d somehow managed to avoid actually killing the men who’d taken him, which would have been difficult to explain, and the smuggling ring was broken up, which made the powers that be at Scotland Yard much more inclined to look the other way over the whole affair. Anderson received a stiff note of apology. Everything was completely back to normal by the end of the week.

Except that when they finally got John home again, Sherlock refused to sleep in his own bed.

Lestrade didn’t find it too strange the first night. All three of them were whacked, and it was very nearly impossible for either Sherlock or Lestrade to take their eyes off John for a moment (he’d tell them where to get off soon, no doubt, but for now he seemed too exhausted to mind). So it seemed almost natural that when John threw himself down on his own bed, sighing in quiet ecstasy, Sherlock would collapse next to him with an echoing sigh and fall asleep the moment he was prone, one thin hand still clutching John’s wrist. Lestrade was entirely in sympathy with this idea, and after a moment’s hesitation he lay down too, on the other side of the bed, John in the middle.

“Are we all over you too much, d’you want us to piss off?” Lestrade murmured, making an effort to keep his eyes open for the moment so he could study John’s face. He looked just like himself, only very tired.

“No, good, it’s good,” John assured him, pulling Lestrade’s arm around over himself and nestling into the curve of his body, which felt so right that it made Lestrade’s throat ache. He smelled all wrong, of antiseptic hospital soap and mouthwash, but he was _there_. Lestrade hitched himself in a little closer, burying his face in John’s hair. The knuckles of his right hand were brushing Sherlock’s arm, he thought vaguely, but that was all right. It had been a long and harrowing ordeal, and now that it was over he was even prepared to feel magnanimous toward Sherlock, at the moment; he didn’t mind having him there, silent for once and with all the complicated angles of him smoothed by sleep.

It wasn’t until the next day that it began to seem a little weird. When John woke up around noon he declared his intention to take the longest shower ever and then do nothing but lounge on the sofa watching terrible television all day, and Lestrade said he’d better go out and stock up on some provisions, then, because there was nothing much edible left in the kitchen unless they were prepared to resort to cannibalism. Sherlock was still impersonating a corpse in John’s bed and stayed out of the conversation entirely. When Lestrade came back from doing the shopping, though, he found that Sherlock had emerged from the bedroom to station himself lengthwise on the sofa with his head in John’s lap before falling asleep again.

Lestrade cooked them all an enormous fry-up, casting looks out at the living room over his shoulder from time to time. It gave him a bit of a strange feeling to see the two of them like that, with John’s fingers absently moving in Sherlock’s hair, working out the tangles. Not entirely jealousy, he thought. There was something _nice_ about it, somehow. Just...odd.

“Does he do this often?” he asked John finally, bringing him a steaming cup of tea laced with so much sugar that the spoon could nearly stand up in it.

“No, never,” John said, sounding bewildered and amused. “Does it bother you?”

“I can’t seem to mind much of anything, today,” Lestrade said, and kissed him. “He’ll have to shift it in a minute, though, unless you fancy eating with him sprawled all over you like that.”

All three of them ended up on the sofa for most of the rest of the day, dozing on and off and getting up for snacks and jostling lazily for space and not talking about much of anything. It was one of the nicest afternoons Lestrade could ever remember spending in both of their company, but after eight or ten hours of it, he did begin to feel as though some personal space might not be a bad thing.

“Think I might go home for a bit,” he ventured by late evening, standing up for a stretch. “Sleep there tonight, even, maybe, and then go in to work for a few hours tomorrow--will you be all right?”

“Fine, yes, I’m fine,” John said, almost snapped, really. Then, “Sorry. I mean, yes, of course, it’s quite all right, you should go.”

“You’re allowed to not be fine, you know,” Lestrade told him.

“Oh, leave him _alone_ , for God’s sake,” Sherlock moaned, without opening his eyes. “He’s got all kinds of experience in being traumatized by now, he doesn’t need you to tell him how to do it.”

“That’s a bit much,” Lestrade said. “I was only--”

“All right,” John cut in, standing up. “I know things are getting back to normal now, if you two are starting to have a go at each other again. Come on, I’ll see you out; I could use some air.”

******

John closed his eyes and leaned against the door after he’d let himself back in, alone. He wasn’t sure whether he felt like falling apart or not, but it was difficult to know either way while he was being paid so much _attention_.

Not that he really felt much like being on his own again, either, he realised, and headed back up the stairs to the warmth and light of the flat.

Sherlock had disappeared, which caused him a few minutes of consternation, until he went up to his room and found his own bed half-occupied once more. “Is this going to become a Thing?” John asked him, but Sherlock was dead to the world again and didn’t answer him. John changed into his pyjamas in the bathroom and then came back and got into bed. He didn’t turn out the bedside lamp. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to sleep in complete darkness again, but he wasn’t awfully worried about it for now.

He woke at three-something in the morning to find Sherlock lying half on top of him, clutching his wrists. “All right,” Sherlock was saying, “I’ve got you, John, it’s all right, I’m here, _I’ve got you._ ”

“What, why, was I shouting?” John usually knew when he’d been shouting. The nightmares were vivid, with images that burned in his brain for hours after. There were no images now, just a sort of mild foggy confusion.

Sherlock released him and moved away. “You must have been,” he said, but John caught something puzzled in his look. “Do you need anything? Water?”

“No, thanks,” John told him warily. “Go back to sleep.”

*****

Sherlock was still crashed out when Lestrade dropped by the next evening with takeaway and beer. Lestrade wasn’t surprised to hear it, but he was a bit nettled when he learned that John’s bed had become the designated crash spot.

“Come home with me, then?” he asked. “I don’t have plans to jump on you, not until you feel up to it, but--”

“I am entirely up for being jumped on,” John said quickly. “In fact, I think it would be downright therapeutic. I’m...not sure how I feel about leaving Sherlock on his own, at the moment.”

"Oh." Lestrade mulled it over. "You...do know that's completely insane?"

"A lot of things about my life are completely insane," John said, with that tight smile of his that wasn’t really a smile. "There's always Sherlock's bed."

Both of them were silent, considering Sherlock's bed.

"Or we could just snog on the sofa like a couple of teenagers hoping someone’s parents don't come in too suddenly," John suggested.

"Hmm," Lestrade said, doubtful, but John pulled him close by his shirt front, and his mouth was very warm, his hands insistent.

Ten minutes later John was stretched out full length beneath him on the sofa and they were both beginning to get breathless and shaky. Lestrade had just begun to work a hand down in between them to start undoing some of the layers of clothing which separated them when a quiet whisper of a sound behind them made him freeze.

 _“Sherlock,”_ John muttered, like it was a swear word, and then, louder, over Lestrade’s shoulder, “Sherlock? What are you-- Are you _making tea_? Right now, you had to decide that making tea is one of your abilities?”

Sherlock shuffled into the doorway between kitchen and living room, wild-haired and dull-eyed. “I _need_ tea,” he complained. Lestrade sat up, glanced down at his lap, and untucked his shirt very quickly. “What time is it?” Sherlock added querulously.

“Half seven,” John said.

“A.M. or P.M.?” Sherlock plodded over to the sofa, paused in front of it, and waited for John to shift over closer to Lestrade before flopping down next to him with a giant yawn. “What are you doing? The television’s not even on.”

They looked at him, then at each other.

“Not someone’s parents, coming in suddenly,” Lestrade said crossly. “Someone’s _five-year-old_.”

“Oh,” Sherlock said, sitting up straight. _“Oh._ You were-- Yes, of course. Well.” He started to stand, but John hauled him back down by the belt of his dressing gown.

“Stay,” he said. “You might as well, now. I’ll get the tea; you’d only scald yourself, or put arsenic in instead of sugar, the state you’re in.” He went out to the kitchen, leaving Lestrade to glare at Sherlock. Sherlock, in a post-case haze: he tried to remember back to the days when he’d still found it charming. Back before he’d decided that the revelation of endearing vulnerability was at least part calculated sham, like so much else.

“You do realise he’s been through a bit of an ordeal quite recently?” Lestrade hissed. “And you’re really going to make him wait hand and foot on you right now? Really?”

“It’s good for him.” Sherlock yawned again, collapsing limply over the arm of the sofa once more. “Takes his mind off himself. Anyway, he loathes coddling.”

“That is...completely fucked up,” Lestrade said, with more certainty than he felt.

John came back in, and there was tea, there was reheated takeaway, there was heated arguing over television programmes and a good-natured three-way wrestling match over the remote. It all began to feel oddly normal. Lestrade watched John, who laughed, whose smile was open and bright, whose hands did not shake. Who had recently been locked away inside a lightless cave for endless terrifying days with only his own memories for company.

“What was it like?” Lestrade asked, finally, when Sherlock had passed out on the sofa and the two of them had crept off to reclaim John’s room for their own again.

John didn’t have to ask what he meant. “Like? It was...horrible, it was a living nightmare,” John said readily, settling himself on his pillow. “Can’t think how to describe it.” He gave a brief shudder. “Brr. Anyway, it’s over now.” He gave Lestrade a reassuring smile, which was the last thing he wanted.

“You can’t just be okay about it, not this quickly,” Lestrade insisted.

“You want me to have a breakdown over it?” John said, his voice going a little deeper with something. Anger, or disappointment, Lestrade couldn’t tell. He was being selfish, ridiculous probably.

“Of course not!” _But if you do, will you share it with me and not him?_ No, he couldn’t say that.

“What about you?” John asked.

“Me?”

“Yeah. What was it like for you?” Half challenging, half concerned.

 _He doesn’t want to be the broken one,_ Lestrade realized. Bloody doctors. Sherlock had the right idea after all, maybe.

John was waiting for his answer. Concern taking over a little more now, from his expression. “I was furious with you for letting it happen,” Lestrade said, and leaned over to kiss him, a hard ungentle demand of a kiss. “ _Furious._ So. Are we going to sleep now?”

“No,” John said, sliding his hands up inside Lestrade’s shirt and kissing him back. “Not just yet.”

*****

John woke at some point during the night to the sound of the doorknob being rattled. Insistently. He stared at it for a while, hoping it would stop, and when it didn’t he got up and pulled on his boxers and a t-shirt before he had to find out whether Sherlock would actually go to the length of picking the lock.

“You could try knocking,” he said, opening the door.

“I didn’t want to wake you.” Sherlock looked genuinely uncomfortable, shifting back and forth on his bare feet in the hallway.

John waited, folding his arms.

“Can I come in?” Sherlock demanded, straightening up and summoning something of his usual manner. Imperious, annoyed.

John cleared his throat. “Well. Let’s see. _Why?_ ”

“To sleep,” Sherlock bit out, with the implied _you idiot_ hanging unspoken in the air between them.

“To sleep,” John repeated, and rubbed his chin. “Have you gone _insane_? I’m asking seriously.”

“We did it last night,” Sherlock pointed out. “And you’re not having sex at the moment. You did that earlier, and you never have it off more than once a night, so I’m not interrupting anything.”

John came out into the hallway and shut the door behind him. He put his hands on Sherlock’s shoulders and made eye contact with him, speaking slowly and deliberately. “Sherlock. This is-- You must _know_ this isn’t normal behaviour. Are you on drugs? Perhaps you should be on drugs. Do you need a sleeping pill? I’ve got--”

“Oh, never _mind_ ,” Sherlock huffed, wrenching away, and went back downstairs. John stood there in the hallway with his head bowed for a full minute, listening to the replay in his head of certain parts of the conversation they’d just had, and then went downstairs after him.

“Come on,” he said. “Come to bed.”

Sherlock shut the desk drawer he’d been rummaging in. “No,” he said stubbornly. “Changed my mind.”

“Well, change it back then. Let’s go. I’m not having you down here doing drugs or whatever other kind of trouble you were about to get into on your own. Come _on_ ,” he repeated, and turned to go back upstairs, pausing on the third step until he heard Sherlock start to follow.

*****

“ _What,_ ” Lestrade said, when he woke to discover that the bed was triple-occupied again. “What the _hell_.”

“I know. Shh. Come on, we’ll go talk about it downstairs.”

“I’m not wearing any _clothes_!”

“Doesn’t bother me a bit,” Sherlock mumbled sleepily from the far side of the bed. “Anyway, I didn’t see anything. Much.”

“Oh, this, this is _not on_ ,” Lestrade grumbled, fumbling for his pants.

*

John made breakfast for him. “You should go in to work. We’ll be fine, really.”

“ _You’ll_ be fine. He’s playing at having a nervous breakdown or something. Of all the times to--”

“Oh, give him one more day. You know how he gets, after a case.”

“Shamming.”

“I don’t think sleeping twenty hours a day can be shammed.”

“It’s horrible, it’s ridiculous, you shouldn’t have to be bothered about _him_ right now!”

“Gives me something to do. I’m not on the rota at the clinic till Monday.”

“Come home with me, let him sort himself out on his own. No, you won’t, of course not. All right, I’m staying clear, then, I’ll only make things worse. Phone me when normality resumes. Well, what passes for normal around here, anyway.”

*

Lestrade firmly intended to take a break from everything Sherlock Holmes-related for a while. Let him and John work this thing out on their own; he _refused_ to be jealous, it was ridiculous. He’d catch up at work, put in some time at the gym, go round to his sister’s and have dinner with her and the kids. Above all, he would not dwell on the fact that his boyfriend was essentially holed up in seclusion with a lithe and gorgeous madman who’d apparently decided to make him his security blanket.

He phoned John after twenty-seven hours. “How’s it going?”

“Good. Great. Really...great,” John said in a clipped, bright voice that indicated it was anything but. “No, it’s been lovely. The constant sleeping thing’s been and gone. We’ve been having some interesting conversations here. He’s given up.”

“Given up what?”

“Given up detecting. Sherlock Holmes, retired detective.”

Lestrade started to laugh; he couldn’t help it. “Give over.”

“Nope, completely serious. Changed his website and everything.”

“But that’s _ridiculous_ ,” Lestrade pleaded. “He’d go spare. More spare. What’s he think he’s going to do, get a job in a shop?”

“No idea. Research, he says. Non-case-related research. Funded by whom, I’ve no idea, but--”

“It’ll blow over in two days,” Lestrade predicted.

*****

It didn’t blow over in two days.

John experimented with leaving Sherlock alone in rooms for increasing increments of time; Sherlock seemed edgy, but didn’t actually object, although he insisted on coming along whenever John went out for any reason. And he continued to invade John’s bedroom nightly.

On Monday, John went back to work, expecting to feel a certain amount of agoraphobia and paranoia upon reemerging into the world outside on his own. He didn’t. It was wonderful. London was experiencing a rare sky-blue week of late-springtime glory, everything rainwashed and fresh-looking and simply perfect to his starved eyes, even the wheelie bins. He loved his patients, he loved his city, he loved his fucked-up _life_.

Sherlock texted him 112 times that first day, checking in.

When John arrived home, there was a horribly familiar-looking umbrella in the stand just inside the front door, despite the sunny day. He cursed under his breath and took the stairs two at a time, but there was no sibling détente in the sitting room when he burst in, no acts of violin-torture to drive the intruder away. Just Sherlock, slumped in an unhappy curl along the arm of the sofa.

“He’s gone,” Sherlock informed him. “Only just.”

“He’s left his favourite weapon behind. Is it a bug, do you suppose?”

“No, he just leaves them sometimes. Like a calling card. He must have dozens. Message to you, really. _Contact me if he gets any more out of hand._ It might as well have your name written on it.” He sounded drained, as if Mycroft had been performing acts of vampirism on him.

“What did he--”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Come _here._ You’re much too far away.”

He half-sat, reclining against the arm of the sofa, and John shed his jacket and went to him. Allowed himself to be enfolded. Sherlock pulled him back against his chest and breathed him in, burying his face in John’s neck and inhaling greedily.

“This is a bit weird, you know,” John told him eventually.

“Is it?” Sherlock asked, muffled in skin.

“You know it is. Anyone else, this’d be the precursor to.... Well. Sex.”

“Yes, but you know I don’t want that, so it’s all right.” Sherlock was apparently trying to _burrow into_ John’s body. “You’ve got Lestrade for that. Thank God. When’s he coming back round, anyway?”

“He thinks you need space,” John said. “Or...we need space. Or he does. Something. Sherlock, I do need to _breathe_ , I’m sorry.”

Sherlock relaxed his grip one fraction. “I don’t need space.”

“Well, obviously, no.”

“And I’m not changing my mind about retiring.”

“Of course not. Wouldn’t dream of trying to convince you otherwise.”

“You’re humouring me,” Sherlock sulked. “You think I’ll get bored, get over it.”

“No, I think you’re having a crisis. I hope you’ll get through it. And it seems a shame to give up the detecting, as you’re so suited to it. But you’ll do as you like.”

“You’ll miss the thrill of the chase,” Sherlock said thoughtfully. Then, “Doesn’t matter. You’ll be safe, so it’s better. Even if you end up leaving.”

John let his head fall back onto Sherlock’s shoulder, craned his neck to look round at his face. “I’d stay even if you decided to become a bloody florist. Have you had enough of this yet? Can I go and make tea? I would like tea.”

Sherlock released him. “Tea would be nice,” he allowed.

John envisioned a triangle as he made the tea. A triangle with shifting angles, its lines changing length as the energies between its three points waxed and waned. Lately, he was aware, all the energy had been directed at his point; everyone seemed to be _requiring_ a great deal from him lately. Which he didn’t mind, exactly. He thought of the awful time, pre-Sherlock, when he’d been superfluous and alone, and shuddered. It didn’t bear remembering. Still. He wasn’t sure that he was going to turn out to be the solution to this particular problem. He pictured the three lines that made up the triangle, the vectors of energy all flowing down toward one point. One of the lines was weakened; it collapsed; the whole thing fell apart.

“It won’t work,” Sherlock told him, when John brought him his tea.

“What won’t?”

“Whatever you’re contemplating. You can’t manipulate me; I’m too clever. I’ve thought of it all already.” He looked unutterably weary, shoulders hunched as he sipped from the cup. “We do need him, though, you’re right about that. When it’s just us it gets too...” His hand described what he meant, a fluttery grasp at empty air.

“I’ll sort it,” John promised.

“You won’t. You can’t. He hates dealing with me when I’m like this, always did. You’ll see.”

*****

“I hate dealing with him when he’s like this,” Lestrade grumbled, when John rang him that night. “I can’t come round. We’ll get into a terrible row and you’ll go off and get yourself kidnapped again just to escape us.”

“ _He_ thinks I like being fought over.”

“Does he? Well, look at that, the great genius is wrong for once. Although I do think there’s a part of you that enjoys playing the peacekeeper at times.”

“At times, perhaps,” John said. “Constantly is a bit much.”

“Well,” Lestrade said. Then, “No, I won’t come round. I’ve no patience with his prima donna act. He’s got you to coddle him; he doesn’t need me.”

John didn’t reply.

Lestrade couldn’t see the expression on his face, of course, but he had no trouble at all envisioning what it would be. He sighed. “Right, you want me to come round and _not_ coddle him. Play the bad cop. Something like that?”

“I just want you to _be here,_ ” John told him. “I’m not being strategical. I like having you here. _He_ likes having you here.”

“Is he still sleeping in your bed?”

John didn’t say anything for a minute. “It’s rather a _large_ bed,” he pointed out.

“Oh, for-- No. No, absolutely not, it’s too bizarre. I can’t do this.”

“He’ll get over it. He needs to start working on cases again, obviously.”

Silence.

“I do have one weird one that came in today,” Lestrade admitted. “All right, I’ll come for supper tomorrow. More than that I won’t promise.”

*

“We don’t know if it’s kids playing pranks or some nutter who thinks he’s making a political statement,” Lestrade told John, stretching out on the sofa, comfortably full of curry. Sherlock was still picking at his own dinner at the desk, pretending not to listen. “They’re awfully determined, though. I suppose I could imagine taking a swing at a bust of Margaret Thatcher if I were passing it on the street every day, but breaking into someone’s house to do it? _Three times_? And how’d they know which houses to break into, is the real question--it’s not as if they were sitting right in the front windows.”

“You’re being pathetically transparent,” Sherlock snapped. “I refuse to get involved.”

“Didn’t ask you to, did I?” said Lestrade.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “ _Pathetically,_ ” he repeated.

“Well, why shouldn’t you keep on helping me out with the odd case now and then?” Lestrade demanded. “You needn’t get publicly involved. A little behind-the-scenes advice wouldn’t hurt; I’m not asking you to come to any crime scenes here.”

Sherlock picked at his curry some more; John went out to the kitchen and returned with beer. “You’ve questioned the man who decapitated that statue at the Guildhall Gallery a few years back, I’m assuming,” Sherlock said finally.

“Brought him in right away, yeah. Airtight alibi. I honestly believe he wasn’t involved.”

Sherlock declined further comment. And Lestrade declined comment when Sherlock came over on his way back from dumping his takeaway in the bin and inserted himself in the space next to John on the sofa. John made room for him without even taking his eyes off the television, his arm going automatically up along the back of the sofa so that Sherlock could nestle in alongside him. When Lestrade glanced over again, he saw that Sherlock was asleep or half-asleep on John’s shoulder, John’s fingers laced carelessly into his hair. John, following Lestrade’s gaze, looked over at Sherlock fondly, and then turned back to kiss Lestrade, more than fondly.

“How can this be easy for you?” Lestrade wanted to know.

“Hmm? I don’t know. It is easy, though. Does it upset you so much, honestly?”

Lestrade wasn’t sure if it did, or if he only thought it ought to. He decided to try not being upset by it, just to see. He suspected that Sherlock was awake when he and John left the sofa and went upstairs a few minutes later, but Sherlock didn’t make a sound, just shifted his weight onto the arm of the sofa. In return, Lestrade said nothing when he heard the bedroom door creak open in the middle of the night and felt the mattress give under a third person’s weight. John spooned up closer to him in his sleep, sighing softly, and that, Lestrade decided, he didn’t mind at all.

When he woke again, it was full daylight, and the sound that jolted him from sleep was the heavy thud of outer door to the building being pulled shut. There was a key in the lock, and footsteps walking away down the street, brisk.

The space in the middle of the bed was empty. A John-shaped no-man’s-land. “You’re kidding me,” Lestrade groaned, and Sherlock made a protesting sleepy sound and reached out an arm. His eyelids flew wide open in alarm a moment later.

“He’s just left for work, that’s all. Christ. Do you let him go to the loo by himself?” Lestrade felt bad as soon as he said it, because Sherlock looked genuinely panicked. Only for an instant, though. His eyes turned sharp and cold and self-aware as soon as he was awake enough to assess the situation.

“I suppose you’re meant to talk some rough sense into me now,” Sherlock said. “Your idea or his?”

Lestrade shook his head and laughed, rolling back over onto his back. “His. And fuck that. When did it ever work?”

“You tied me to a chair one time. That was fairly effective.”

“Massively different circumstances. And the revenge you took afterward would make anyone think twice about doing it again. No, you’re on your own.” He smiled lazily, though, thinking of it: the one day of his life he’d truly bested Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock was silent, scrutinising him with naked interest, and Lestrade glanced down at himself and remembered that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. The scar. Right.

“I’ve never seen it,” Sherlock said, unable to hide his fascination. “It’s a lot longer than I expected.”

“As the actress said to the bishop,” Lestrade quipped, but Sherlock barely smirked in response.

“You were how old, eight? But there’s a secondary-- _Two_ operations. The second one two, three years later?”

“Three,” Lestrade said. “Three years.” He was surprised by what an effort it took not to turn away, cover up, after all this time.

Sherlock’s eyes flicked up to his face. “Sorry,” he said, and looked away.

Lestrade wanted to get out of the room suddenly, badly. He could handle Sherlock when they were both fully dressed and cloaked in professionalism, or with the buffer of John between them. He’d forgotten, though, just how much he hated the terrible feeling of exposure you inevitably got from being around Sherlock in any kind of personal context. He fucking _knew everything_ , or if he didn’t, you couldn’t help imagining that he did. Lestrade almost sympathized with Anderson and Donovan sometimes, honestly. Only John could take it, and Lestrade still had no idea how he managed--but then John was indestructible, he’d proved it time and time again. Lestrade, as every doctor he’d ever met liked to tell him, was not.

“You can’t _give up_ detecting,” he said, vicious anger coming out sharp and sudden in his voice, making Sherlock blink. “What in God’s name do you think you’re going to do? Your head’s made of razor blades. You’re going to stay in here and focus all of that on him? Even he’s not up to that. You’ll shred him. You’ll lose him.”

Sherlock had gone still, leaning back against the headboard with his legs up, long legs in striped pyjamas, arms wrapped around his knees. “Better that than let him be taken away, locked up, _killed_ by some lunatic on the street,” he said, his voice and expression absolutely flat, as if this were something he’d repeated to himself a hundred times before. “Next time--”

“You’re insane. There might not be a next time. You’ll definitely lose him your way--”

“But he won’t be _dead,_ ” Sherlock pointed out, a needle of anger working its way to the surface of his voice at last.

“He can take care of himself. Jesus. Have you _met_ the man? Besides, he’ll have us.” Lestrade realised that he was stupidly delivering exactly the sort of speech he’d planned not to make, and got up swiftly, stealing the topsheet to wrap around himself so he could make it out of the room with at least a shred of dignity left. “Whatever. I’m not doing this. Like I said, you’re on your own.”

*****

The umbrella was in the bin outside the front door when John arrived home from his second day back at work, which he took as a hopeful sign of returning life and energy. Sherlock had texted him a relatively moderate fifty-seven times that day, another cautious victory.

The flat smelled of sulphur and cooked bacon, and the kitchen tabletop was covered with beakers. "Stop _grinning_ ," Sherlock warned, as John entered the room and surveyed the chaos. "It's purely experimental research."

"Of course," John said lightly. "I'd never have suggested otherwise. Have a nice chat with Lestrade this morning, did you?"

Sherlock gave him a black look. "I've told you, John, if you think there's any chance these cheap manipulations are at all--" He stopped mid-rant as his mobile went off. It was sitting on the edge of the desk, within John's reach, and he read the message before tossing it over to Sherlock. His own mobile buzzed as he did so, and he fished it out of his pocket; the texts were identical.

 _Another Thatcher bust, and a body this time as well_  
Come instantly  
131 Pitt Street, Kensington

GL

They looked at each other, then back at their phones. Sherlock shook his head and turned back to his beakers with a hand-wave and a sniff of disdain.

“Well, _I’m_ going,” John said, and picked up his jacket from the chair where he'd tossed it when he'd come in. He was out the door and down the stairs again before Sherlock could object.

He waited on the front walk, glancing at his watch. Sherlock held out for another three and a half minutes before bursting out the front door at a run, coat half on.

John smiled, and turned to hail a cab.


	3. The Adventure of the Dying Detective Inspector

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock decides that a flu-stricken Lestrade is just what he needs for a case.

The flu struck fast. Lestrade left the Yard at six-thirty in the evening with nothing more than a headache and a tickle in his throat that barely registered as an annoyance. By the time he got to Baker Street, the chills were setting in, but even then he didn’t think much about it; it was ruddy cold out, wasn’t it? Nothing unusual there. The flat was dark and empty, and that was a disappointment; John was almost always back from the surgery by this hour. Lestrade’s mobile buzzed as he was fumbling for the light switch.

 _Working late, bad flu going around_  
Order something for me, will you?  
Chinese tonight maybe?

He sighed, and went to rummage through the drawer of dogeared takeaway menus, trying to ignore the alarm bells that had started up in his brain at the words _bad flu going around._ Fucking _hell_. Surely not. He was shivering steadily now, but that was easily explained; the flat was like a freezer. Must be a window open somewhere--one of Sherlock’s godforsaken experiments, no doubt. Lestrade found the menu from the Chinese place they liked, the one with the really excellent potstickers that--no, oh hell, his stomach gave a cold jolt of revulsion and he had to put the menu down and walk away.

John was going to _kill_ him.

He went over to the sofa and wrapped the throw around his shoulders, kicking off his shoes and curling up with his head on the armrest. He was exhausted; that was half his problem, no doubt. Maybe a bit of a lie-down would get him back to normal. If he could only just get _warm_...

*

“Oh, no. _No._ I can’t believe this. Not you, too!”

Lestrade startled awake, thoroughly disoriented, wondering what godawful thing Sherlock had left lying around to get John into a tizzy this time. It took him nearly a full minute of confused blinking before he registered that John was addressing _him_ , and another minute to figure out where he was and how he’d got there and why everything felt so hot and bright and painful and surreal. “Sorry, yeah,” he said. “Think I’m coming down with something.”

John gave a long sighing groan, something between disgust and despair, and collapsed in the nearest armchair with his head in his hands. “Twelve hours I’ve been at it, without a break, without a bite to eat, and I end up coming home to yet another case? God. I could slit my own throat. And I don’t suppose you managed to order the takeaway, either,” he accused.

Lestrade shook his head, which made the room start to spin. He shut his eyes quickly and burrowed back down into the throw. “Sorry,” he mumbled again. He wasn’t sure whether to feel contrite or nettled. He could see how it would be a hell of a thing to come home to after a long hard day of dealing with more of the same.

“No, _I’m_ sorry,” John said after a moment, still sounding dismal. “You probably feel rotten and it’s not your fault and I’m being horrible to you. I’ll be properly sympathetic in a moment, just--give me two minutes to feel ridiculously sorry for myself for what I’ve been through today. One minute.” He paused, leaning his head back against the chair and closing his eyes for a moment, then sat forward again. “There, I’ve finished. Come on then, sit up a bit, let me have a look at you. When did it start?”

“Fuck off,” Lestrade mumbled. “Go and order your takeaway. ’M not your patient.”

John gave a disbelieving laugh. “Oh, right. And you can’t even be one of the easy ones, no, right, of course. That, that’s just lovely. That takes the biscuit. Do you honestly--”

 _“Fuck off,”_ Lestrade repeated with feeling, the words scalding his sore throat like lava. He threw off the blanket, got to his feet, and started unsteadily towards the door.

“Hey, hey, come back here.” John jumped up and led him back to the sofa, pushing him down firmly by the shoulders. “What are you doing? You can’t go anywhere.”

“I want my own bed. And I can take care of myself, thanks. I’m not, I didn’t, I wouldn’t have come round here at all, if I’d--”

“Well, you’re here now. And just as well; if you’d gone home, I’d have had to go over to your place, and I really think it might have killed me tonight.”

If he’d gone home, Lestrade thought, he’d never have been so stupid as to let John know he was ill at all, and the whole thing would have been a non-issue.

“Go back to sleep,” John told him, his voice placating now. “Maybe you’ll just have a mild bout of it; you don’t look too terrible. You should’ve seen some of the sorry cases that came crawling in today--I had to send them straight over to A&E. Look, I’m going to order some food. I’m an evil bastard on an empty stomach. Soup for you?”

“Yeah, please,” Lestrade said, though he had no intention of eating anything ever again. He shut his eyes, as much to avoid John’s fond worried look as anything else, but the minute his eyelids dropped he succumbed to another wave of dizzy exhaustion and found himself unable to open them again.

 

*

“Thirty-nine-point-oh,” John announced the next morning, frowning at the thermometer. “Christ. So much for a mild bout.”

“That’s not _so_ bad,” Lestrade said defensively. He only vaguely remembered getting up the stairs and into John’s bed the night before; he’d protested a great deal about having to change into pyjamas, he seemed to recall, but apparently he hadn’t won that argument.

“At seven-thirty in the morning?” John swiped a hand down his face and sighed. “And I’ve absolutely got to go in today; there’s probably a queue outside the surgery already.”

“Well, go, then. I have had flu before, you know. And somehow managed to live well into my forties before I even met you. I think I can just about survive a day in bed on my own.”

“Hmm.” John pressed two fingers to Lestrade’s carotid pulse for a minute, looking thoughtful, then prodded gently at his belly. “Any cramping? Nausea?”

“No and no.” Lestrade pushed him away. “And I’m going to punch you if you don’t leave me alone. It’s no fun playing doctor when you actually feel like crap.”

John smiled faintly. “All right. I’ll call and check on you whenever I can get away. And I think Sherlock’s downstairs, if you--”

 _“No,”_ Lestrade said with a shudder, turning his back and huddling up under the duvet again. “Oh, God. Perhaps I’d better go home after all.”

“Go on,” John suggested. “Try it. I could do with a laugh right now.”

Lestrade shot a hand out from under the covers and forked a V at him without turning around. He drifted off again to the comforting sounds of John getting ready for work.

*

It was a wretched, wretched day. Lestrade honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this ill. He tossed and turned all morning and into the afternoon, miserable with aches and disoriented by the fever, exhausted but unable to sleep except in fitful dozes. He longed for the dubious distraction of daytime television, but it seemed too much effort to drag himself down the stairs, and, anyway, Sherlock would be lurking about, no doubt doing all kinds of horrible things Lestrade wouldn’t want to witness.

As the hours passed and his temperature rose, the shadows in the room took on weight and substance, until he fancied he could see them moving, hear them whispering in words he could almost make out. It was equally fascinating and disturbing. Perhaps a bit more disturbing. He shifted restlessly on the pillows, turning his back on a particularly malevolent-seeming shadow cast by the radiator. Just then, a dark presence in the corner shifted, stretched, and took on a familiar face.

“ _Christ_ , Sherlock,” Lestrade said in a hoarse whisper, his heart racing. “Don’t _do_ that. You just scared the--how long have you been sitting there?”

“A while,” Sherlock admitted.

“Well, _don’t_. It’s fucking creepy.”

“What, I’m not allowed to watch over an ill friend?” Sherlock sounded hurt.

“Bollocks. You weren’t watching over me, you were _watching_ me. You’re _still_ watching me. Cut it out, I just told you. I’m in no mood to be observed.”

“You were muttering to yourself a few moments ago. I thought perhaps--but you seem fairly lucid now.” Sherlock came close to the edge of the bed and surveyed him critically, head tilted, hands in his pockets.

“Well, you don’t have to sound so disappointed about it,” Lestrade said, taken aback.

“It’s for a case. Very timely, in fact. I’ve been thinking--”

Lestrade’s mobile rang, and Sherlock reached over and picked it up. “Sherlock speaking.” He flopped down on the bed next to Lestrade, who moved over to make room. “Are you? Oh. Yes, he’s right here. No, he’s awake. I don’t know, let me see.” He reached over and put a palm to Lestrade’s forehead. Lestrade batted him away, indignantly. “Quite warm,” Sherlock said. “Yes, the thermometer’s right here on the table. Use any means necessary to obtain a reading, I take it?”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Lestrade sat up, reaching over him. “How bloody juvenile can you get. Give me that.” He turned on the instrument and put it under his tongue, then lay back down and shut his eyes.

Sherlock took it from him when it beeped. “Thirty-eight point thr...ee,” he said to his phone. Lestrade frowned; that didn’t sound quite right. “Yes, of course. No. No, I don’t think so. All right.” Another pause. “All _right_ , I said. Good heavens, John. You never fuss this much over _me_ when I’m ill. No, I know, I know. Do you want to speak to him?”

Lestrade took the phone. “I’ve got to stay late again,” John told him, sounding very unhappy. “It’s desperate around here and there’s absolutely no one else to cover evening hours this week. How are you bearing up?”

Lestrade wasn’t sure, but he proceeded to give what he hoped was a passable imitation of someone who was laid up with a mild fever, capable of watching television and making tea and toast for himself. Luckily, it was a brief conversation.

“How are _you_ bearing up?” he remembered to ask.

“Oh, fine,” John sighed. “I never catch anything. More’s the pity. I’d love an excuse to come home and crawl in next to you, right now.”

“Yeah, it’s great fun,” Lestrade told him. “I think Sherlock’s planning to use me in some sort of mind-control medical experiment.”

John gave a tired-sounding laugh. “He would, wouldn’t he? Well, you know where I keep the Sig; you have my permission to use it, if necessary. Only if absolutely necessary, though. It’ll make a terrible mess and I don’t imagine the Yard will be at all understanding, even if it is self-defence.”

“I’m not sure I’m joking, actually,” Lestrade said, but John had already hung up. He passed the phone back to Sherlock, who put it back on the table and turned back to gaze at him with bright interest.

“Go away,” Lestrade rasped. “Or I’ll...” He tried to think of a threat he might be capable of following through with, in his current condition.

Sherlock raised his eyebrows, waiting, looking tolerantly amused and insufferable and annoyingly, unforgivably _healthy_.

“Breathe on you,” Lestrade finished finally. “Bugger off and let me die in peace.”

“Oh, come on. I’m not actually evil, you know. I am planning to look after you. It’s just a wonderfully opportune time for me to make some first-hand observations on the psychological effects of a high fever. And you’re fine, really.”

“Am I?” Lestrade tried to remember a time when he’d felt less fine outside of a hospital bed.

“Well, basically. You are awfully hot at the moment. Thirty-nine point nine; I’m impressed you can carry on any kind of conversation at all.”

“You lied to John?” Lestrade asked, feeling light-headed and unreal. The shivers were setting in again.

“He’d only worry unnecessarily. ” Sherlock fished a small notebook from his pocket and began jotting down some notes. “Are you experiencing any visual disturbances right now?”

“Give me the phone back,” said Lestrade. “I’m calling my sister. She’ll pick me up.”

“You’re overreacting,” Sherlock told him, patiently, moving the phone out of his reach, without looking up from his notebook. “And still mostly in your senses, it would seem. But it’s only been about seven hours since your last dose of paracetamol, going by what John told me before he left for work this morning; another hour or so might--”

“Wait.” Lestrade wasn’t sure he’d heard that right. “Seven hours? But...the dosage is every four, isn’t it? What time is, it, anyhow?”

Sherlock made an impatient gesture. “I can’t gather any useful information if we keep altering the results with medication. Tell me: do you feel as though your perceptions of reality have significantly changed in any way over the past thirty to sixty minutes?”

“Sherlock.” Lestrade grabbed hold of his wrist, stopping his writing hand. “Look. Look at me. I am _miserable_ here.”

Sherlock looked. At last he put down his notebook, reached for the paracetamol bottle, and wordlessly shook him out a dose.

“Thanks,” said Lestrade, and when he’d swallowed the pills he pointedly turned his back and curled up to wait it out until they took effect. He was vaguely aware of Sherlock leaving the room, moving about the flat. Eventually, when his teeth had stopped chattering and his eyeballs no longer felt as though there were about to melt in their sockets, he shifted, cautiously, and found that mere existence was no longer entirely excruciating. He cleared his throat, which felt like a cracked and rocky landscape, parched beyond any hope of repair.

“There’s Lucozade on the table next to you,” Sherlock said from the armchair across the room. “You don’t like the original flavour, it reminds you of your childhood illnesses, but I’m afraid it’s all they had at the shop, and you should probably drink some fluids, if you can.”

Lestrade shot a quick glare at him, but he pushed himself up on an elbow and swallowed as much of the stuff as he could. There was a dish of half-melted ice cream on the table next to the glass--coffee ice cream, his favourite, which he supposed was as close to an apology as Sherlock was capable of giving.

“I’ll tell you about the case I’m working on, shall I?” Sherlock offered, leaning forward in the chair with his fingers steepled, still watching him much too intently.

“Oh, why the hell not,” Lestrade sighed, and took a spoonful of the ice cream, which slid down his throat, blissfully cold and sweet.

Sherlock smiled, tucked his feet up beneath him, and launched into it. It made almost no sense to Lestrade, but at least at the moment he had a decent excuse for failing to keep up.

“He killed his own _nephew_?” he said at one point, incredulous. “And now he’s--I’m sorry, he’s sent you _what_ in the post? Where do you find these characters, Sherlock? Also, isn’t this a matter for the HPA? You’re talking about germ warfare here!”

“He’s merely a madman with a rudimentary basement laboratory and delusions of grandeur,” Sherlock said, with a shrug. “The public has nothing to fear, trust me. And the contents of the package he sent me were harmless--well, nearly harmless. Almost certainly not fatal. Anyway I’ve definitely neutralised them.”

Lestrade pushed his half-full ice cream bowl aside at the thought of _almost certainly not fatal_ substances being neutralised in the kitchen it had come from. Also-- “Isn’t John the one who usually brings up your post?” he said uneasily. “Supposing he’d--”

“The package was addressed to me,” Sherlock said. “Though I do take your point. Anyway, he didn’t. Supposing _you_ had, is the question,” he added slowly, as if something had just occurred to him. “Ah.” He tilted his chin toward the ceiling, eyes scanning back and forth as if he were reading the solution there. “Of course, that would work. Much simpler than my original idea, in fact.” He looked down again, focusing his gaze sharply on Lestrade. “It won’t even require much in the way of make-up, this way. Don’t you agree?”

“Sorry, I don’t follow.” Lestrade was beginning to feel dizzy again. “And don’t call me an idiot,” he added sharply. “I’d have trouble following the plot of a Teletubbies episode right now.”

“It’s nearly that simple,” Sherlock told him. “But all right. I’ll explain.”

*

It was very late before John made it home that evening. Lestrade didn’t hear him come in, wasn’t aware of his presence at all until he woke up at the feeling of cold air on his skin as his t-shirt was lifted up, and something colder still was pressed against his back. He shivered. “Do we need to have another conversation about non-consensual medical procedures?” he murmured without opening his eyes.

“Shut up and breathe,” John told him. “Please,” he added as an afterthought. “Good, you’re all right,” he said after another minute. “I’ve been worrying all day. This flu’s a killer. I saw a twenty-five-year-old this evening who-- You know what? Never mind. _God,_ I’m glad to be home.” He collapsed half on top of Lestrade, burying his face in his neck. “Did you get along OK with Sherlock? Didn’t have to kill him and stuff his body under the floorboards?”

“Mmnh. He wants to use me as bait to entrap a small-time biological weapons manufacturer tomorrow,” Lestrade said.

“Does he? That’s typical,” John said, sounding nearly asleep already. “You’ll have to let me know how it goes. I’m doing another double shift tomorrow; Sarah’s gone down with it now. You’re still much too warm. Do you need any--” He gave a jaw-cracking yawn. “--thing? Are you drinking enough? Have you eaten anything?”

“I’m OK,” Lestrade said. Well, there’d been the ice cream. “You?”

John said something unintelligible into the pillow that trailed off in a snore.

*

Sherlock was delighted when he came in to check on Lestrade late the next morning, after John had left again. “You look _wretched_ ,” he announced, which was exactly what John had told him, but in a much less pleased tone of voice. “You could definitely be in the last stages of dengue fever. Paint a rash on you and you’ll be ready for action.”

“Is that what I’m supposed to have? Wait--this bloke Smith sent you _dengue fever_ in the post?”

“Well, attempted to. Trace amounts of it. You’d have to inject pure strains of the virus directly into the bloodstream, the way he did to his nephew, to make it anything like lethal. He’s a lunatic, I told you. But he _thinks_ he did--there’s the thing. If I email him in a panic, he’ll be at the door to gloat over his success within the hour, wait and see.”

"Why did I agree to this?" Lestrade wondered out loud, as Sherlock proceeded to perch cross-legged on the bed next to him and use the tip of a paintbrush to dapple crimson dye in pinpoints all over his throat and upper chest.

"Because it's exciting and you haven’t become a complete stick-in-the-mud yet?" Sherlock suggested, absorbed in his own handiwork. "Tilt your chin up, so I can do the underside. And don't talk. You'll blur."

“Tickles,” Lestrade complained, without moving his jaw. He supposed it _was_ more exciting than flipping television channels all day and trying not to think about how much his head ached. Also, this Smith character certainly needed to be apprehended, if what Sherlock said was true, and there was a kind of gratification in being able to do his job even while on sick leave.

And, if he were honest with himself, it was always a bit of a thrill to get to play the straight man with Sherlock on a case. To have Sherlock need _him_ for once, and not John. Perhaps it was mad, but he even liked it that Sherlock seemed to have so little regard for his health and safety here. The way John had looked at him that morning made him feel...old. Old and fragile.

“There,” Sherlock said, leaning back and surveying Lestrade with pride and satisfaction and not even a touch of concern. “And you’re getting all glassy-eyed and hollow-looking, too--it’s perfect, I’d never be able to simulate it half so well. Skip the afternoon paracetamol dose today and you should be a feverish wreck by nightfall. Just don’t try to overdo the delirious raving; you’re not a good enough actor, you’ll end up sounding silly. Vague and lethargic will have to do. Right, you may as well grab a nap now, I’ll wake you when he’s on his way. This one’s going to go _brilliantly_ , I can tell.”

*

In fact, it all went almost as far from brilliantly as it was possible for it to go.

“Lestrade. Come on, it’s time. Wake up. Lestrade?”

Someone was shaking him. Sherlock was shaking him. “Fuck off,” Lestrade said. “No deal.”

“No, you can’t-- _Lestrade_. You have to wake up now. Can you--oh, God, this is a bit more verisimilitude than I’d hoped for. Come on, Smith is on his way over, I need you to be able to arrest him. Lestrade!”

“ _Ow_. Cut it out, Sherlock. I’m--Christ, I’m awake, what do you want?” Lestrade focused, with difficulty. Sherlock had him by the shoulders, was peering at him anxiously. Lestrade tried to turn away, but Sherlock grasped his chin with long cold fingers, forcing him to make eye contact.

“The plan, Lestrade. Culverton Smith, self-styled expert in tropical diseases. You’re going to help me arrest him in less than half an hour. Yes? Come on, _wake up_!” He snapped his fingers an inch from Lestrade’s face.

“I _am_ awake, you bastard,” Lestrade snarled. “All right, all right, I remember. Dengue fever.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said, his features seeming to melt slightly with relief. “Good. Excellent. You’re ready?”

“I don’t really have dengue fever, do I?” Lestrade wondered, which was apparently the wrong thing to say, as it made Sherlock’s face go all sharp and alarmed again. “I didn’t catch it from the ice cream? I do feel bloody awful.”

“You’ve got flu,” Sherlock said, sounding utterly defeated. “Oh, not good. All right. I’ll phone John--he’s going to murder me, incidentally--but I can’t do it yet; you can hang on for just a bit, can’t you? I’ll have to get another officer in to do the arrest, but that’s--”

"No, I can do it, I can do it," Lestrade insisted. "Don't call John, we'll never hear the end of it. Just...give me a minute, I just need a minute. I'll be fine."

Sherlock looked doubtful. "You're sure?" he said, and Lestrade said that he was, and when Sherlock had left the room, he closed his eyes and became hopelessly confused again.

*

Culverton Smith was one of the resourceful and well-prepared variety of lunatics. He was not amused to discover that his scheme had missed its mark; he wanted Sherlock dead, not distressed. He was also very determined and much stronger than he looked, despite his age, and so was able to catch Sherlock off guard. Or so Lestrade was able to surmise after the fact. When it all kicked off, the only thing he was really aware of was that there was a violent struggle going on in front of his eyes, and that it didn’t appear to be going at all well for Sherlock.

Lestrade wasn’t sure how the Sig had made it into his hands--he didn’t remember getting it out from the box where it slept malevolently under the bed--but it seemed like a good time for it to be there. It would have been better if he hadn’t been trembling quite so much, he knew, and if he’d been able to focus his vision more precisely on the thrashing figures before him, but he still wasn’t entirely sure this wasn’t a dream, so he wasn’t as concerned as he might have been. He pointed the weapon.

And then John walked into the room, so it _had_ to be a dream, or possibly a hallucination.

"What--" John said, and then went absolutely still, and Lestrade watched with sudden detached clarity and saw John take it all in: the struggle on the floor, the white-haired snarling madman; the hypodermic pressed to Sherlock's throat, the tip of its needle just denting his skin; and finally Lestrade, sitting up in bed with a wildly shaking pistol in his hands.

John took a step towards him. "Greg," he said, which was surprising, because John almost never used his first name, only when--well, really very rarely, and Lestrade looked down and saw to his horror that the gun had ended up pointed at _John_ , somehow. He dropped it instantly, and John scooped it up and aimed it in one beautiful, elegant motion and fired a warning shot into the floor and, when that didn't have any effect, he stepped forward and clubbed Smith once on the head, viciously hard, with the handle of the gun. The figures on the floor separated, and there was a sobbing, panting almost-silence.

“I’m not dreaming this, am I,” Lestrade said, finally, when no one else spoke.

John went to Lestrade first, which was shamefully gratifying, considering that he might just have killed a man and that Sherlock could very well have been injected with God-knows-what, as well as having been choked almost senseless. He sat next to Lestrade on the bed and touched his throat, gently; his fingertips came away red. “Fuck, am I bleeding?” Lestrade asked, bewildered. “Oh. No, that’s the rash.”

“The rash,” John said.

“Dengue fever. I don’t really have it,” he said hurriedly. “I don’t think. Sherlock gave it to me. With paint. I’m almost sure that part actually happened. I’m not explaining this very well. Is Sherlock all right? He’s got a, a needle stuck in his neck--”

John turned to look, and then put his hand over his eyes for a bit. “And that bloke I just brought down, that’s the--what did you say last night? Small-time biological weapons manufacturer?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.” John sighed heavily. “Sherlock?” he said loudly. “Are you dead? If so, you will be saving yourself a lot of pain and me a lot of trouble right now. You may want to think before you answer.”

*

The ensuing pandemonium of phone calls and sirens and emergency vehicles and decontamination procedures was _epic_ , as Lestrade’s nephews would say, and Lestrade was actually glad to escape it all in one of the ambulances, early on. (John insisted. He didn’t dare argue.) They all spent some time in hospital after that, as a matter of fact. Culverton Smith was put in restraints and treated for concussion before being carted off to a secure hospital. He hadn’t managed to depress the plunger on the syringe that he’d used to attack Sherlock, but Sherlock was given batteries of blood tests, just the same, and kept in isolation overnight while the needle and its contents were analysed. He didn’t dare argue either, apparently, though Lestrade bet it half killed him that he wasn’t going to get to perform the forensics investigation himself.

Lestrade was only mildly dehydrated and felt miraculously better after a couple of hours on an IV drip, but John wouldn’t even consider taking him back home until his temperature had stopped spiking up into the kind of numbers that gave him a cardiac arrest just to think about, he said. In the meantime, John announced, he was going back to 221B _on his own,_ to sleep in uninterrupted silence for a minimum of twenty-four hours, and after that he’d see if he felt like talking to either of them ever again.

Sherlock dropped by to visit Lestrade late the next afternoon. He was wearing his normal clothes and looked perfectly ordinary--ordinary for Sherlock--except for the neat white bandage on his neck and the fact that he wasn’t able to make eye contact with Lestrade at all.

"You've been cleared, then?" Lestrade asked him. "That's good. Surprised you're still hanging around. Or are you afraid to go home and face John?"

"A bit," Sherlock admitted.

"He'll forgive us. Eventually."

"You, maybe," Sherlock said. "He was downright unpleasant when I spoke to him this morning. It's going to be a while, I'm afraid."

"Oh," said Lestrade. "Still, good thing he happened to come home at the time he did, eh?"

"He didn't just happen to." Sherlock was startled into looking directly at him for the first time. "I texted him our emergency code. When I came into your room with Smith and couldn't get a word of sense out of you--I panicked."

"Did you?" Lestrade tried to remember, and came up with a few hazy flashes. "I'm touched. I’d have thought you were acting."

"I was." Sherlock looked cross. "Mostly. At first. I thought _you_ were acting. I was wondering how you'd managed to get so good at it. When I realised you weren't, I texted John--"

"And Smith saw you do it?" Lestrade guessed. "And then it was all up. That's when he attacked."

"He would have, anyway. Doesn't matter. But I'm sorry for involving you," Sherlock said stiffly, as though he'd rehearsed it. Probably he had. "It was terribly reckless of me, and--oh!" He ducked as Lestrade lobbed a paper cup at his head. "What's that for?"

"Being sorry," said Lestrade. " _Don't_.”

He’d never had an apology from Sherlock before. He’d have thought it would be a moment of triumph, to finally hear the word _sorry_ from the man who was never wrong--but now he realised that it was the last thing on Earth he wanted.

Sherlock cocked his head, giving him a considering sort of look, and then broke into a half grin. “All right. Not sorry.” He picked up the cup and tossed it back at Lestrade. “Can I be glad you’re not dead, at least?” he said, and turned to go.

“I suppose,” said Lestrade. “Likewise,” he called after him, and they left it at that.


	4. The Night Sherlock Broke All the Numbers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lestrade is delirious. Sherlock becomes concerned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually just a rambling tangent/outtake from the previous chapter, because I needed more feverish!Lestrade.

Lestrade could tell when his most recent dose of paracetamol was beginning to wear off because he was suddenly freezing again. He huddled deeper into the duvet, frowning in his sleep and burrowing down to try and find some warmth in his dreams, but eventually he shivered himself awake. He lay there and shook for long confused minutes in the dark until the ache in his bones brought it all back to him: Flu. Fever. Must be time for more medicine soon. At two a.m., John had said, he could have another dose--it had to be nearly two by now, or perhaps even later, perhaps he’d slept right through it.

It took effort to turn over and look at the bedside clock when everything hurt so much. The smallest motion triggered a fresh sickening wave of the shakes, and the scrape of the sheets against his wrists was very nearly unbearable--but he managed it, finally, and focused his eyes on the glowing red numbers.

1:17. Shit.

He lay there and listened to his teeth chatter for a while. John was sleeping next to him, breathing audibly, not quite snoring. Lestrade wouldn’t have woken him for the world. He did curl a bit closer to him, though, jealous of his body heat, hoping to steal a little warmth. He fell into a miserable haze again, his mind wandering along strange and chilled paths. 1:20. 1:22. The clock was sentient, he decided. It didn’t like being watched, so it was slowing itself down deliberately to punish him. Best to keep his eyes shut for a while.

When he jerked into a kind of consciousness again, he was no longer cold. He was _baking_. The room was tropical, the bedcovers unbearable torture devices, he could hardly breathe for the heat. Surely it had gone two o’clock by now. Lestrade kicked off the duvet, sought out the red numbers again, and his mouth went dry because they weren’t numbers at all, but nonsense symbols. That fucking clock. Broken, he told himself, his heart beginning to hammer, calm down, the clock was just broken. There was his watch in the loo, he could go check that, and the tiles in there would be lovely and cool. He wouldn’t wake John. He was a little frightened at how high his temperature must be, this probably wasn’t good, but he wouldn’t wake John, John needed his sleep, and it would be awful to see him looking all worried at him--didn’t bear thinking about. The watch, he needed to check his watch, the watch was just down the hall.

It was a long and perilous journey. Part of his mind was convinced he was in the jungle, and although he mostly knew it was just the fever fucking with him, that didn’t make it seem any less surreal or more bearable. He was shivering again despite the heat and he didn’t remember dropping to his hands and knees but it seemed to make sense to be closer to the ground, and when he finally got to the loo it was brilliant because he could just press his cheek to the blessedly cold ceramic floor, spread himself out on it like sunbathing in reverse. He was too hot, though, so it didn’t last. The tile heated up under him so quickly he thought he could hear the sizzle--he’d melt it, he told himself, starting to panic, struggling over onto his back. This was a terrible idea, he should get back to the bedroom, but the nightmare clock was there, watching with those hellishly wrong symbols, there was no escape--

*

The light was suddenly much, much too bright. Cruelly bright, stabbing right through his eyelids.

“No, quiet,” John told him. “Don’t move.” His fingers were strong and steady on Lestrade’s neck. Lestrade squinted at him through a halo of light and heat. John looked serious when he was tired and tired when he was serious, and his face was nothing but pale exhausted creases now. “Don’t move,” he repeated, splaying a restraining hand across Lestrade’s chest. “Your heart rate’s through the roof right now. I need you to be still.”

“Did you fix the clock?” Lestrade asked him.

“Yep, fixed it,” John said, but his voice was tight and strange; there was definitely something wrong, something about the clock he didn’t want Lestrade to know, or-- “Think you can hold this under your tongue for me?” He was shaking down his thermometer, the old-fashioned mercury one he kept in his kit. Lestrade nodded and opened his mouth for it. He was glad it wasn’t the digital kind. Whatever’d got into the clock might have affected it, too.

“Too bright,” he mumbled around the glass tube, because even with his eyes shut the ceiling light made sickening patterns flash on the backs of his eyelids.

John covered Lestrade’s eyes with his hand. “Shh. You’ll spoil the reading. One minute.”

It was a long minute. Lestrade drifted, temporarily safe behind John’s cool and shading hand, and wondered if the problem was with time itself and not the clock at all. Either way it was a terrible thing to think about.

“All right,” John said eventually, and took the thermometer from him, then breathed out in a controlled sigh. “Yeah, about what I thought. Fuck.”

“What?” Lestrade asked, frightened.

“Nothing, you’re fine, don’t worry. It’s just a number, nothing to panic about.” John felt his pulse again for a few moments, then patted him on the shoulder. “Not a number I particularly like, though. We’re going to have to work on getting it down. Let’s get you up? Slowly? That’s it, there.” His voice and his hands were so gentle and calm that Lestrade knew there must be something badly wrong. Something about all the numbers going bad, if John didn’t like them either; it must have even gotten into the mercury somehow. He found himself standing up, leaning heavily on John because his legs were shaky with illness and fear, fear which increased as he realised that John was guiding him back toward the bedroom.

“I can’t,” he said, clutching at the door frame, because he could already see the red glow of the clock from there.

“Sure you can. Steady on, just a few more steps, the bed’s right here.”

“No, I can’t, you don’t--I’m not, I’m not going in there,” Lestrade insisted. “That’s where it all started, don’t you see?” His voice was rising to a shout, he was vaguely aware, but John was still trying to propel him forward; he clearly had no idea of the danger.

“Christ,” John moaned, squinting his eyes tightly shut and resting his forehead against the doorway on the other side. “You’re not. Oh god. Lestrade, please, I’m so _fucking_ tired I can’t do this will you _please_ just let me put you in bed and we can talk about it there?”

“What’s going on?” a voice called up from downstairs. “John?”

Sherlock. Of course. Sherlock was downstairs, he’d cocked up all the numbers in one of his insane experiments. It all made sense, if only Lestrade could get the words out properly, if only John would just _listen_.

“Yes, that’s _exactly_ what this night needs, thank you,” John said quietly, and then called back, “Nothing, it’s under control, don’t come up.”

Sherlock came up, taking the stairs two at a time, and surveyed the two of them sharply for a moment. His eyebrows went up. “Need help?” he asked John.

“He’s delusional with fever and has apparently decided the bedroom is evil,” John told him, still leaning against the doorway with his eyes closed. Lestrade let himself slide down to sit with his back against the hallway wall, muttering to himself, trying to find the words to explain the situation. Sherlock squatted down on his heels next to him for a moment, listening, then nodded once and unfolded up to a standing position again.

“Not the bedroom, the clock,” he told John, and strode right into the room--he did that, Lestrade had seen him do it dozens of times; it looked like bravery but it was really that he just didn’t care at all what happened to him, so nothing usually did. He came out again straight away with the clock in his hands, its screen blank and dead.

“It’s got into all the numbers now, though,” Lestrade protested. “I don’t think that’s actually solved anything.”

“No, but it buys us some time,” Sherlock said seriously. “I’m working on it, shouldn’t be long, but the bedroom’s as safe as anyplace right now--you may as well get some rest, let John take care of you. Come on, I’ll help you up.” Sherlock’s eyebrows went up again as he got a hand under Lestrade’s armpit to lift him, and he shot John a quick look; there was _still_ something very wrong about all this, but Lestrade was beginning to long for something to rest his aching head against at this point. He allowed himself to be led back to bed, allowed John to feed him paracetamol tablets and most of a cup of water, then subsided into the pillow. He kept his eyes shut so he wouldn’t see all the things he knew were moving about in the corners of the room; bad enough that he could still hear them. _Scrabbling_. There were voices, too, which he attempted to ignore, because they were pitched too high, too fast.

*

“A&E?” Sherlock asked.

John shook his head wearily. “I’m hoping to avoid it. It’s just a fever spike, no reason to think it won’t come down with meds, maybe a cold pack or two to help it along. Not going to be a restful night for him, that’s all.”

“Hm. Nor for you. What do you need?”

John pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to think. “Ahh...there should be some bags of frozen vegetables in the freezer. If you could bring those up? And a couple of tea towels? Bowl of lukewarm water, clean flannel. Thanks.” Sherlock offering help was such an anomaly that John didn’t dare glance at him--better to pretend he didn’t notice, probably. He turned back to his medical bag instead and disentangled his stethoscope so he could listen to Lestrade’s chest while Sherlock was out of the room.

It wasn’t often he got to do this. He tried not to worry overmuch about Lestrade’s heart condition, tried to leave him alone about it apart from making sure he went to his cardiologist appointments and keeping a sharp surreptitious eye on him for unusual signs of fatigue. Lestrade didn’t want to be _fussed over_ , and John could certainly understand that.

But he was awed and terrified, now, by the sound of Lestrade’s heart working so hard in its overheated cavity. That sinister whisper of blood leaking from chamber to chamber. Without thinking about it, John pushed up Lestrade’s t-shirt impatiently so he could get a better listen, and Lestrade moaned and shivered in his sleep.

“Shh, I know, just a minute,” John told him, holding him steady with a warm hand to his abdomen, but it was more than a minute; he couldn’t seem to tear himself away from the hypnotising susurration, and he was still listening intently when Sherlock got back to the room.

“It’s a dangerous flu for patients with pre-existing medical conditions, from what I’ve read,” Sherlock said from the doorway, startling him. “Sure you don’t want to run him over to A&E?”

John removed the earpieces from his ears, letting the stethoscope dangle, and rolled his head, wincing as his neck cracked. “Pretty sure,” he said. “There’s no arrhythmia, no real cause for alarm right now. We’d likely just wind up sitting in a waiting room somewhere till morning anyhow. I do want to try and get the fever down, though, get his heart rate a bit lower if I possibly can. Here, I’ll take that, thanks.” He reached for the water bowl that Sherlock was carrying, but Sherlock hung onto it for a moment.

“You don’t think perhaps an injection of something, digoxin, metoprolol...?”

John stared at him, wide-eyed. “I...no. That’s not...indicated, at this point, I wouldn’t...wow. You’re actually concerned, here, aren’t you?”

Sherlock scowled, his jaw going stubborn, but before he could say anything, John added, “Sorry. I’m sorry, it’s...no, that’s nice, that’s very nice, I just wouldn’t have expected--it’s fine, it’s good of you, but--”

Sherlock shoved the supplies into John’s hands, sloshing water onto his shirt front. “I’ll be up for a bit longer if you need anything else,” he said curtly, and turned to go. “Just shout. Need to get back to my experiment now--it’s probably coagulated already.”

John shook his head, closed his eyes briefly, and then sighed and went to change his shirt.

*

Lestrade was in the throes of the shakes again and failed to appreciate having makeshift ice packs pressed up against his sides, even wrapped in layers of cloth to shield his skin from the bite of cold. “No,” he protested, opening his eyes wide. “Oh god why are you doing that I’m freezing. Don’t do that. Why?”

“Sorry, love.” John lifted up his arm so he could push the second pack into place. “Need to get you cooled down a bit here. Just for a few minutes, OK?”

“No,” Lestrade said, trying to peel John’s fingers away. “Ow! I’m bloody freezing to death! Why are you being so horrible? Are you evil? Have you gone evil too?”

“No one’s evil,” John told him, and lay down next to him, wrapping his arms around Lestrade’s shivering body in a firm hold. “You’ll be all right. I know it feels cold, but your temp’s over forty degrees right now.”

“It’s not,” Lestrade insisted, his teeth chattering. “It’s a mistake. The numbers are bad. Oh god, horrible, you’re killing me. Please don’t do this.”

John was too tired to try and soothe or reason with him. He readjusted his hold and curved his body around Lestrade’s, hoping it wouldn’t turn into a fight. After a minute Lestrade made a choked relenting sound and went limp in his arms, still shivering miserably. John pressed his face into the hot hollow between his neck and shoulder. “OK, good,” he said, and yawned. “Better. You’ll feel better in a bit. Promise.”

*

Sherlock was at the foot of the stairs, listening with his head cocked. It was now nearly three a.m., and he hadn’t heard a voice or a rustle from the top bedroom in at least fifteen minutes. Cautiously, barefoot and noiseless, he mounted the steps.

The toilet was upstairs, after all, and he’d been drinking tea all night. And as long as he was upstairs he might as well look in on them.

They appeared to be asleep, Lestrade sprawled out on his back in the center of the bed, with John curled around his left side, one leg thrown over him. No one would be the wiser, probably, if Sherlock decided to come around the other side of the bed and assess the situation a little more closely.

Lestrade wasn’t very deeply asleep, unfortunately. He stirred restlessly and tried to raise his head when Sherlock pressed two fingers to the pulse in his throat. “What--”

“Quiet,” Sherlock whispered, and rested a hand on his forehead. Lestrade subsided. His heart rate was still rapid, his skin still alarmingly warm. Perhaps a bit less so than an hour ago. “Are you lucid?” Sherlock demanded.

“Don’t know,” Lestrade whispered back. “I think so. Just... _damp_.” He touched his side tentatively. “Why’s it so damp?”

Sherlock leaned closer to inspect, snaking his hand down in between Lestrade’s body and John’s, and pulled out a soggy bag of half-thawed peas. He found its twin on the other side and pinched both bags of vegetables between two fingers, considering them for a minute. He was tempted to just toss them into the corner, but this was John’s room and there’d surely be a row the next day if he did. He left the room and carried the bags into the bath instead. While he was there he found the mercury thermometer on the edge of the sink and brought it back to the bedroom with him, shaking it down.

He’d never taken anyone else’s temperature before. It was slightly more difficult than it looked. Lestrade sighed in annoyance when Sherlock nudged him out of his doze and told him to open up--“Why won’t anyone just let me _sleep_?”--and yelped when the thermometer poked him too hard underneath his tongue. Sherlock wasn’t sure how long to leave it in, and it was impossible to read in the dark, but he didn’t want to turn on the light and disturb John. Finally he managed to get a good look at the mercury by the light of his mobile.

“Thirty-nine point five," he said. “Bit better than it was, I suppose. Are you still thinking the clock’s out to get you?”

Lestrade looked puzzled, from what he could see in the dark.

“Well, that’s something.” Sherlock looked over at John doubtfully.

“He’s knackered,” Lestrade said hoarsely, apparently alert enough to be able to read Sherlock’s hesitation. “Don’t wake him, for god’s sake. ’M all right. Just hot. Open a window or something, will you?”

“It’s February,” Sherlock told him. “You’ll freeze to death and John will be cross with me forever. I’ll never hear the end of it. Budge over a bit.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and fished out the flannel from the bowl of water he’d brought up an hour ago, wrung it out, and carefully began wiping down Lestrade’s face and neck. Lestrade made a surprised sound when the cool cloth touched his skin, and he paused. “All right?”

“God, yes,” Lestrade said. “Feels fantastic.” He was quiet after that. The flannel heated up quickly, and Sherlock had to dip it into the water and wring it out again several times. It was a strange thing to be doing at three in the morning, but not really an unpleasant task.

“You did this for me once,” Sherlock remembered suddenly, startled into saying it out loud. “Not long after we met.”

“Yeah, I did.” Lestrade’s eyes were half-open, glittery with fever. “That was a hell of a night. Followed you home. Crazy skinny bastard. Christ, but you were ill. Thought you were done for.”

Sherlock’s hand stilled. “Why didn’t you phone for an ambulance?”

“I did,” Lestrade reminded him. “Eventually. You don’t remember?”

“I deleted it,” Sherlock said absently. “Most of it.” Or he’d thought he had. Bits of it were coming back now, visceral memories of pain and helplessness and sheer unreasoning fury. He’d spent six days in hospital with a raging blood infection and then been shuttled off to rehab. It had been a long time before he’d been willing to return any of Lestrade’s messages.

“Just as well, I suppose.” Lestrade sounded discomfited. “Not a good time.”

Sherlock didn’t answer.

“Worked out all right in the end, though,” Lestrade offered after a minute. “I mean, lucky for you I was there to follow you, yeah?” Sherlock blinked, coming back to the present.

“Lucky for _you_ ,” he snapped back.

“All right,” Lestrade agreed, managing a rather dizzy grin. “For me, too.”

The cloth in Sherlock’s hand had gone warm again, and he dropped it into the bowl and put the back of his hand to Lestrade’s face. He was really no cooler at all, Sherlock realised, feeling strangely frantic. There ought to be some way to _make_ a fever like this break.

“I don’t like you being this hot,” Sherlock said irritably. “It can’t be good for you. John should take a look at you again. Isn’t there any--”

“Oh, don’t wake him.” Lestrade raised himself up on his elbows, looking distressed. “Really don’t. He’s knocked out, look at him. I’m all right.”

“You’re burning up. You’re all...weird and emotional. An hour ago you tried to accuse me of destroying the fabric of time.”

“Well, go back to what you were doing, then.” Lestrade jerked his chin at the bowl of water on the bedside table. “It was nice. It was helping.”

Sherlock glanced over him at John again. The shadows under his eyes looked darker than ever before.

“You can wake him in an hour,” Lestrade promised. "If you still want to by then."

"Half an hour." Sherlock pushed on his chest. "Lie back down."

*

John snapped wide awake at 6:15 and switched on the bedside light to find them both there, tangled together looking like they were having some sort of bizarre paleness competition with the pillow. Sherlock’s face was mashed against Lestrade’s shoulder, his arm thrown carelessly across Lestrade’s stomach, and they were both snoring lightly, not quite in sync.

“I am absolutely getting a photo of this to use as blackmail,” John said aloud. It was obvious that the fever had broken, but John was still absurdly relieved when Lestrade shifted against him and sighed and blinked a few times--the brown eyes were sleepy and a bit unfocused, but he was clearly _there_ again.

“Hi,” Lestrade whispered, and then, shyly, “Sorry about last night.”

“Never a dull moment,” John said, and kissed him lightly on the forehead. “That’s all right. You can be the one to nurse Sherlock when he comes down with the same thing in two or three days. Bloody idiot,” he said to the dark head on Lestrade’s pillow, not at all fondly.

The corners of Lestrade’s mouth quirked upwards, and his eyes drifted shut again as he pulled Sherlock’s arm more securely across his body. “Stay in bed,” he murmured before settling back to sleep again. “Stay here with us.”

John didn’t even really try to resist.


	5. How Not to Have an Enjoyable Nooner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Lestrade just can't get a break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally posted as a stand-alone fic, but in my head it's always been part of this 'verse, so I'm adding it retroactively, two years later. (21 March 2013)

_12:00 PM  
INCOMING CALL: JW_

“Hello, you,” Lestrade said, shutting his office door as he picked up the call. “This is unexpected. Where are you?”

“Home.”

“Already? Thought you’d be in Sussex with Sherlock till this afternoon.”

“Took off early. Told Sherlock I’d been called in for an emergency shift at the surgery. Can you come down here?”

“What, right now?”

“Lunch break?”

“I never have lunch breaks. Crime doesn’t take lunch breaks. How about later?”

“Yes, well, the thing is, I’m home _alone_ , for the moment. Sherlock caught the next train, he’s on his way, but we’ll have the place to ourselves for nearly an hour if you come round right now.”

“Oh. Well, then. In that case, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Bring the handcuffs?”

“The...really? Hmm. Make that five minutes.”

Usually, the two of them were able to get sufficient private time by spending several evenings a week at Lestrade’s place. For the past two weeks, though, Lestrade’s sister had been staying with him while her marriage went through a rough patch. John was entirely sympathetic, understanding, and patient with the situation. He was also beginning to feel badly sex-starved.

*

_12:07 PM_  
I know you’re not at the surgery.  
This subterfuge is beneath you, John.  
If you need alone time with L you can always ask.  
SH

John turned off his mobile on the way to answer the door. “That was fast,” he said.

“Well. Sounded rather urgent, when you called.”

“Very urgent. Get over here.” John pulled Lestrade in close by his jacket front.

“God,” Lestrade gasped, when John released him. “How long has it been?”

“Days.” John nosed at the underside of his jaw, inhaling deeply, then shoved Lestrade’s jacket down his shoulders and started in on his shirt buttons. “Weeks? Feels like forever since we’ve been alone.”

“I spent the night here three nights ago!”

“Yeah, with Sherlock downstairs listening in the whole time.”

“So what? Let him listen.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to face him across the breakfast table the next day. He _smirks_. I’m looking forward to being as loud as I want to be for once, today--Mrs. Hudson’s out, too.”

“Hmmm. How loud do you want to be?”

“Make me scream,” John told him. “If you’re up to it.”

“Oh, I’m up to it.” He spun John around, pushed him up against the wall and held him there with the weight of his body pressed all up along him full-length. “Brought the cuffs,” he murmured into John’s ear. “Suppose I should pat you down to start off with. Might as well do this properly.”

“Might as well, yeah. I’ll try not to resist arrest. Wouldn’t want to make you have to use undue force.”

“Only due force, then, got it. Hands on the wall, spread your legs.”

*

Ten minutes later, Lestrade still had his suspect pinned up against the wall, facing him now, minus his clothes. Lestrade was wearing his button-down--only just--and his pants, although John’s hands were inside them, doing something that made his breath come short and his knees buckle.

“Christ, I can’t stand up when you do that. Could we take this upstairs?”

“I thought...maybe Sherlock’s room? His bedframe has those iron bars.”

“He won’t mind?”

“He’s not here. Besides, with what I put up with from him on a daily basis? He definitely owes me. I’ll take care of the sheets after.”

They stumbled into the room, still kissing, and fell onto the bed.

“Full body cavity search time,” Lestrade growled. “Arms up, hold onto the bars.” He’d remembered to grab the handcuffs from his jacket when they moved into the bedroom, and he looped them around the center bar of the headboard, then clicked each cuff into place around John’s wrists.

*

_12:27 PM_  
Having fun yet?  
I advise you to steer clear of my room.  
Crime scene reconstruction on the bed.  
SH

*

Lestrade frowned. “What in the hell is this? It’s _sticky_.”

“Oh, bloody-- Knew I should have put on the light when we came in. It’s all over me. What _is_ it?”

“It’s...I think it’s jam? Is that possible?”

“It’s Sherlock, anything’s possible. God, I’m covered in it. Ugh. Unlock me, I can’t stand being this sticky--maybe we can do this in the shower instead?”

“Got a better idea,” Lestrade said, and licked a patch of it off John’s shoulder. “Mmm. Not bad. Least it’s fresh. I skipped lunch to come here, too.” He moved down to lick jam from John’s ribs, his stomach, his inner thigh.

“That’s--hey, that tickles. Cut it out!”

“Nope, I’m enjoying this. Hold still--”

“Oh, that is _not_ my idea of a proper lubricant. Disgusting. Come back here a minute.”

Lestrade crawled up John’s body and kissed him again, jammily.

“Mmm...yeah. Oh. Hang on, hang on a tick. What flavour is this?”

*

_12:34 PM_  
By the way.  
Is it raspberries you’re allergic to, or strawberries?  
I always forget.  
REPEAT: AVOID MY BEDROOM AT ALL COSTS.  
SH

*

“Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, John, what do I need to do? You’re not going to go into anaphy-whosis, are you?”

“I don’t think so. The reaction’s not usually that severe. Of course, I don’t usually _bathe_ in the stuff, either. No need to panic, just unlock me and I’ll go take an antihistamine.”

“Right,” Lestrade said. “Not panicking. Key's in my trousers, trousers are...somewhere. Hallway, I think. Sure you’re all right?”

“My tongue’s going numb. You might hurry a bit.”

*

“John. This is bad. I don’t have the key.”

“You what? Oh _christ_.”

“I’m sorry! I left in a rush! Oh god. Should I call 999?”

“No! Just...go find the bottle of Benadryl, it’s in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. I think.”

“You think? You’re going all red and swollen around the mouth. John--”

“Go!”

“Fuck!”

*

_12:41 PM_  
It IS strawberry you’re allergic to, isn’t it?  
It was on sale at Sainsbury’s.  
Are you all right?  
SH

_12:43 PM_  
Have you got your phone turned off?  
SH

_12:44 PM_  
Of course you do.  
Bugger.  
SH

*

Lestrade rummaged wildly through the medicine cabinet, finding nothing that looked useful. Ran downstairs again to find John half-conscious, struggling to breathe. Panicking, he dashed back to the hall, grabbed his jacket up from the floor, found his mobile and switched it back on. A text message came in at once.

_12:46 PM_  
EPI-PEN IN TOP RIGHT KITCHEN DRAWER  
SH

He raced to the kitchen so fast he skidded on the floor.

*

Sherlock arrived home at 1:01 and found his flatmate naked, cuffed to his bed and covered in jam, with an epi-pen still stuck in his right thigh.

Breathing, though. So that was all right.

“I take it you didn’t get my second text,” he told Lestrade, who was flopped across the mattress half on top of John, chest heaving, wearing nothing but one sock and a jam-smeared pair of boxers. Sherlock picked up Lestrade’s phone from the floor, flipped it open and showed it to him.

_12:49 PM_  
Spare handcuff key in green jar on my bureau  
Train pulling in, home in 10 min  
Everyone OK?  
SH

“Should have sprung for a hotel,” he advised, fishing out the key and leaning over to unlock John's wrists from his bed.

“I haven’t got the energy to smack you with anything,” John murmured, his eyes still shut. “It’s coming, though. When you least expect it.”

“It is _my_ bed,” Sherlock pointed out. “I’m pretty sure you can’t blame this one on me. In fact, if you’d done the shopping yourself instead of forcing me to--”

Lestrade threw a pillow at him. “I’ve got a pair of handcuffs and a warrant card here,” he said. “I suggest you go find somewhere else to be for a bit longer.”

Sherlock swiped a finger down John’s calf and sucked on it thoughtfully as he backed toward the door. “All right,” he agreed. “I’ll go make toast.”


	6. Applied Geometry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is curious, John gets upset, and Lestrade is the Best Boyfriend Ever.

It began as a simple matter of proximity. Proximity and sleep deprivation: or at least, that was what John told himself. But when Sherlock _would_ climb into his bed and fall asleep there at random, intermittent three-in-the-mornings, what could anyone expect? It was dark, he was only about one-quarter awake, and there was a warm body pressed up against his in the cold night--who could blame John Watson for wrapping an arm around it, pulling it close against his chest, and burying his nose in the fragrant hollow of its neck?

It wasn’t that he mistook Sherlock for Lestrade, exactly, because...well, even mostly-asleep, that wasn’t really a mistake one could make. It was more that John was so tired that it didn’t seem to matter. Not when he’d been trudging around Camden for most of the past three days and nights, cataloguing and surveilling all the shops with signs that contained the letter Q. And it wasn’t a problem, anyway, until a couple of hours later, when John’s right thumb woke up a bit before the rest of him did and decided to amuse itself by tweaking at the nipple it was resting on top of, scraping across it gently and then tracing around in swirling lazy circles, just to see if it could make a hard little peak rise up to meet it inside the thin t-shirt fabric.

It could.

John woke up mid-thumbstroke, realised what he was doing (and _to whom_ ), and froze.

Perhaps Sherlock hadn’t noticed. Perhaps he was still asleep?

Sherlock shifted a little, and his hand came up to press against John’s, grinding his thumb more purposefully into that raised nub of flesh. “Oh,” he said. “That’s made me go hard.” His voice was a sleepy-sounding rumble, faintly accusatory.

“Has it?” John asked, doubtful. Sherlock couldn’t possibly mean what John thought he meant.

“Yes, it has.” Sherlock picked up John’s hand and moved it lower, and...yes, it had, he did, he was. John gave him a reflexive squeeze, testing, and Sherlock inhaled audibly, almost a gasp. Then he entwined their fingers firmly together and moved John’s hand inside his pyjama bottoms, using it to stroke himself.

Sherlock didn’t do this, John’s tired brain insisted, ergo it could not be happening. A very vivid dream, perhaps. The early-morning half-light lent a surreal atmosphere to the event, along with his own fugue-like state of exhaustion, and so, against all reason, John simply went with it. The whole thing took less than two minutes and felt more clinical than sensual, a brisk and efficient rubbing as if there were an itch he was helping Sherlock to scratch, and before John could really begin to process the dubious wisdom of what he was doing, it was already ending: Sherlock shuddered and stiffened, a wet warmth flooded over John’s fingers in several quick pulses, and then the long muscles relaxed against him all at once.

Sherlock sighed and stretched contentedly, arching his back. He raised up on one elbow and hitched his t-shirt up over his head, removed John’s hand from his pants and wiped it off with the wadded-up fabric, gave himself a quick scrub, then tossed the soiled shirt into a corner and settled back down into the pillow. Before John could remember how to form audible sounds again, let alone intelligible ones, Sherlock was snoring lightly. Not faking. Actually asleep.

“What,” John said softly, falling over onto his his back and widening his eyes at the ceiling. “What the. Oh _god_ how am I going to explain this to Lestrade.” He pulled a pillow over his face and lay there hating everything about his life for five minutes, then kicked off the duvet and sighed his way downstairs to go make coffee.

*

“I don’t see why you have to make a whole production about it,” Sherlock said irritably, when John, now breakfasted and dressed, sat him down to have A Talk later that morning. Or, anyway, John sat. Sherlock pretzeled himself into an impossible position in his favourite armchair and sulked. “What is there to discuss? You were there, I was aroused--it’s all very normal, or so I’m given to understand. Surely you can’t be as shocked as all that.”

“I’m not shocked,” John insisted. “Well--all right, I am, yes, I always find you shocking; I suppose the surprising part is that you still have the ability to shock me. Let me be clearer. I’m not shocked, or I shouldn’t be, to find out that you do have occasional physical needs of that sort. I _am_ extremely taken aback to discover that you would ever want to involve me. In your sexual acts. In any way.”

“I don’t!” said Sherlock. “Oh, for god’s sake. As I said: You were _there_. You initiated it, in fact, if you want to get technical about it. And I suppose I was...curious, that’s all. I do get curious. About you. On occasion.” Sherlock’s voice and posture managed to convey how thoroughly distasteful he found this admission.

John cleared his throat. “Curious,” he repeated. “About me...sexually?”

Sherlock gave an impatient snort and kicked at the chair back in lieu of an answer.

“I thought you didn’t _do_ sex!” John said, too thoroughly frustrated to stop the words or come up with better ones.

Sherlock flung himself upright and glared. “Crass. Presumptive. _Wrong._ ” He ticked the words off on his fingers, then threw his hands up and relaxed into a boneless heap again. “It is a rare thing with me,” he admitted. “I’ve done some experimenting, of course, and occasionally it’s been necessary as a means to an end. And of course there was the thing with Lestrade. In general I prefer to steer clear of it, yes, but on occasion, when I’m not otherwise preoccupied-- Why are you staring at me like that?”

“You didn’t have sex with Lestrade.” Statement of fact, a simple correction. The world had been swinging eccentrically in its orbit for John all morning long, but this one static truth he’d insist on.

“Well. Depends on your definition of sex, I suppose. He ejaculated. I didn’t. No penetration. He never undressed fully in front of me--didn’t want me to see the scar, I gather, though of course I’d deduced its existence by then. Where are you going?” Sherlock demanded, sitting up straight again.

“Out for a walk,” John said.

“Hold up, I’ll come along. You’re upset? Ah, I see...he’s never told you. But it wasn’t, you shouldn’t--five minutes, let me change into--John, wait!” Sherlock called down the stairs after him, too late. “Why on Earth does it matter _now_?”

*

“It was five years ago,” Lestrade said, looking sheepish, when John charged into his office and confronted him. “And it really wasn’t anything. I’d have told you, if you asked; I wouldn’t have lied about it.”

“No?” John leaned across the desk, cold and focused with anger. “What about that time when I asked you if you’d ever had a sexual relationship with Sherlock and you said no? That one not count?”

“We didn’t! It was just the once, it wasn’t even--” Lestrade got up from his desk and walked to the window, hand at the back of his neck. “Really, it was completely awful,” he admitted. “I’ve always regretted it. Wanted to forget it as soon as it happened. Look, do we have to talk about this _here_?”

John bowed his head for a minute, still braced against the desk. “No,” he said finally, looking up, deflated. “We don’t have to discuss it at all. Never mind. It was...ridiculous of me to come here. I apologise. I was just...well. It’s been a rather eye-opening morning, that’s all.”

“I’m at work,” Lestrade pleaded. “There are murderers. I’m supposed to be catching them, ideally.”

“I know. I know. Really sorry, no idea what I was thinking. Sherlock’s been rubbing off on me, I--oh _god_.” John squinched his eyes shut as if in pain. “Right, we’ll talk later. Or...not, if you’d rather not, that’s fine. I’m off.”

“John,” Lestrade said in halfhearted protest, then, “Yeah, come round tonight, we should talk. I’m sorry, I can’t just--”

“Yes, fine, all right then.” John was already half out the door. “Later.” His mobile buzzed, and he turned it off without looking at it, then strode back down the hall, limping slightly.

*

“So, before we talk about this thing we’re not talking about, I need to tell you what happened with Sherlock this morning,” John announced to Lestrade that night, after they’d eaten and he’d washed the dishes and they’d both avoided saying much of anything to each other at all.

Lestrade’s eyebrows went up, but he listened. And nodded a lot. And said “Huh,” and then went very quiet for a while after John had finished. “All right,” he said, and got up to get another beer. He didn’t offer one to John.

“You’re upset,” John said.

“Well, give me a minute.” Lestrade drank most of his beer, then pressed the bottle to his forehead for a moment. Then he drank the rest, set down the bottle, and sighed. “No, it’s fine, it’s nothing, right? One-time thing. Weird. Not important. It’s fine.”

“But you’re upset,” John repeated.

“Do you want me to be? Should I be? For god’s sake, John. The two of you are practically joined at the hip, he sleeps in your bed half the time, I’ve seen you pet him like a, like a--but I’ve made my peace with it. It's a bit strange, yeah, but I’ve known since I met you I’d have to share you--”

“You don’t!”

Lestrade just looked at him.

“Not that way,” John insisted. “I mean, not in bed. Or. Okay, not _sexually_ in bed. Look, I’ll speak to him, we’ll set some rules. Maybe the sleeping thing needs to stop.”

“It’s all right.” Lestrade shrugged. “Really.” He came over and tugged at John’s sleeve, pulling him up from his chair. They went into the next room and settled on the sofa, where Lestrade wrapped himself around him with his chest against John’s back, warm and solid. “I honestly don’t mind it, any of it,” Lestrade said quietly into his neck.

“You don’t, do you?” John said, and felt himself relaxing a bit. Suddenly he went tense again.

“What?” Lestrade asked. “Am I-- Oh. Yeah, I still haven’t told you about...all right. So--”

“No, it’s not that. I just thought...I’ve been a bit of a jerk to Sherlock, haven’t I?”

Lestrade considered it, his chin digging into John’s shoulder. “Maybe?” John started to shift away, but Lestrade pulled him back. “Hold up. Sherlock is Sherlock. I seriously doubt he’s crying into his pillow. You should talk to him, yeah, I suppose, but I need you to know this first.”

“All right,” said John, and subsided against him, letting him talk.

*

It was pretty much as John had been imagining it, or trying not to imagine it, all day: Sherlock had been staying at Lestrade’s place during one of his more down-and-out phases, had crawled into his bed one night, and Lestrade had been too tired (he said) to kick him out.

“Too tired?” John said, sceptically.

“Well, and I was attracted to the bastard, yeah!” Lestrade said. “Christ. I’d only known him a few months. He wasn’t on anything at the time, I’m pretty sure; I never would have let him, if...and I still don’t know what he was playing at; some experiment or other, I suppose. Nothing but scorn and cold looks for weeks, and then that night he was suddenly all hands, he wanted to touch me _everywhere_ , and--”

“I don’t need the full details,” John said.

“Right, well, anyway. And then he was gone the next morning; didn’t see him for ages. I felt terrible, especially since he didn’t-- I thought I’d-- And when he finally turned up again, it was all business as usual. I tried to apologise and he shrugged it off. ‘It was a consensual encounter,’ that was all he’d say.”

John absorbed it. “Did he stay with you after that?”

“Yeah. Few times. And we’d...you know, after a case, the way he gets. There was...touching. But not sexual. Not really.”

John turned his head and gave him a side-eyed look.

“Really!” Lestrade insisted. “It’s like...now, with you. I mean he’s not exactly shy, is he?”

John started to say a couple of things, and stopped. Lestrade waited.

“Nothing,” John said finally. “Okay. Yeah. Can I go home and think about this? I’m not angry, I just hadn’t thought of it being like that, with the two of you. I just want to...”

“All right, yeah,” Lestrade said, looking upset again. “Go on.”

“I’m not,” John said again, kissing him fiercely. “Look. Yes, I am ridiculously jealous, which makes no sense, and I’m not even sure who I’m jealous _of_ \--but I’m fine with it, or I will be, it’s just a lot. This day. Right?”

Lestrade made an uncertain _hmm_ -sound.

“Come round tomorrow after work,” John suggested. “We’ll have a really awkward dinner and see how long we can all avoid meeting each other's eyes. Then you and Sherlock can, I don’t know, argue over cold cases or something, and we’ll all get on with pretending none of it ever happened.”

“Well, since you make it sound so appealing.”

“It’ll be fine.” John kissed him again, then got up and stretched. “Promise.”

*

“Three-way!” Sherlock announced, bursting into the kitchen that night while John was making a meditative before-bedtime cup of tea and trying to decide how, or whether, to apologise to him for that morning.

He dropped the mug, which shattered on the floor. “What?!”

“We should have one,” Sherlock said, leaning in the doorway and not offering to help him pick up shards of ceramic. “Obviously. You, me, and Lestrade. It’s the perfect solution.”

John decided that staring and blinking was really the only possible response.

“Three-way sex,” Sherlock clarified.

“Right. I am not discussing this tonight,” John said, rummaging through drawers to find a cleanish cloth for the floor.

“Then we can discuss it tomorrow?” Sherlock asked hopefully. He came over and hopped up to sit on the worktop. “I’ve been doing research on some possible positions; there are pictures I could show you, if you like.”

“Pictures? Pictures of-- No. Sherlock, no. All right. I’m sorry. Clearly, you do deserve an apology from me about this morning; I apologise, then. I reacted badly to...well, to every aspect of the situation, really, and if you’d like to talk about it, I’m certainly willing.”

Sherlock sighed loudly. “Talk is boring, John. Relationship talk is _crushingly dull._ I’d much prefer to take a more active approach to the problem. Purely on a one-time basis, you understand; I don’t see this as something I’d like to become involved in as a habit, although we’ll see how it goes, I suppose.”

John turned his back and began clearing up the mess on the floor. “I’m done with this conversation,” he informed Sherlock. “I apologised; I offered to discuss it; we’re through with it. You can stop taking the piss now.”

“I never ‘take the piss,’” Sherlock said, with obvious distaste.

“Well, whatever you’re doing, you can stop.” John put the teacup fragments into the bin and dusted off his hands. “Lestrade’s coming round for dinner tomorrow night. You’re welcome to join us, but I’m warning you right now, if you bring any sort of pictures to the table, I will move out.”

“No, you won’t,” Sherlock said.

“No, I won’t, but I’ll be very annoyed.” John headed for the stairs.

“What about crime scene pictures?”

“Mm, better, but still no. Good night, Sherlock,” John called back down from the landing, and locked the bedroom door behind himself, as loudly and ostentatiously as possible.

*

He was still caught up, he found, in the mental image of a younger, curious Sherlock climbing into bed with Lestrade. Lestrade would have been younger, too: browner-haired and thinner, startled but not unwilling. John wasn’t sure exactly why it bothered him so, thinking about the two of them together, years before they’d meet. And then suddenly he _was_ sure, more or less, which was even more disturbing.

It was nearly eleven at night, not too late to phone Lestrade. “I am a complete jerk,” he said, as soon as Lestrade picked up. “I think I’ve been going on the assumption that I’m the only person who’s ever been able to connect with Sherlock. It’s not true, is it?”

“You really are much better with him than I ever was,” Lestrade told him. “Much more patient.”

“ _And_ I’m the one who technically sort of cheated on you this morning.”

“Hm,” Lestrade said. “Let’s not call it that. Anyway, good to know you’re not perfect. You’d never keep hanging out with the likes of me if you were. Did you talk to Sherlock?”

“A bit. Not really. He thinks a three-way sex scenario will solve everything.”

“He does not.”

“I’m hoping he’ll find something else to distract him before morning.”

“Well, good luck with that,” Lestrade said dubiously. “Dinner tomorrow, still?”

“If you’re up for it,” John agreed. “Feeling energetic?”

“Shut up,” Lestrade said. “I love you. Good night.”

*

There was a kidnapping in Harrow the next day, and a series of stabbings, apparently gang-related, in Croydon the day after that. The awkward conciliatory dinner was indefinitely postponed. Sherlock’s insane proposition went unmentioned by any of them, and John assumed it was one of those things which wouldn’t come up again, until a few nights later when he and Lestrade came home from the pub and found Sherlock sprawled across John’s bed.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Lestrade muttered. “All right--back to mine, then?”

“No, don’t go,” Sherlock said sleepily, sitting up and turning on the bedside lamp. “I thought we could do that thing now.”

John, who’d had several pints, started to laugh, shaking his head. “Impossible. You are just...impossible. Go on, get up, go.”

“Why? You have thought about it. You’re both intrigued.” Sherlock curled himself up into a ball and then stretched out again luxuriously, displaying himself; he was wearing tight, short white boxer briefs and nothing else. “Or I could just watch the two of you. I’d like that, I think.”

“ _Sherlock_ ,” John started to say, but Lestrade cut him off.

“No,” he said. “You two.”

John whipped round to glare at him. “Lestrade! Don’t play along with him.”

“I’m not.” Lestrade shrugged, hands in his jacket pockets, looking suddenly shy and eager. “I have thought about it. Thought about it a lot, in fact, if you want to know.”

"Okay," John said, beginning to pace. "Okay. You've thought about it. That's... Are you drunk? I think you're a bit drunk. Am I drunk? I should be more drunk. I need another drink."

"Calm down," Sherlock said. "I'm not going to jump on anyone. I just think it would be interesting. It can't hurt anything. We're all in this relationship; what difference would it make if we just--"

"We're... What, what?" John cried. " _You_ are not in this relationship, Sherlock. I know you may think--"

"He's not?" Lestrade interrupted. "John."

John turned and walked out of the room, started to go down the stairs, then turned around and went back up again, unbuttoning his shirt.

"All right," he said. "Let's do this. Let's get it over with, because apparently no one's going to just take my word for it that it's a bad idea. No one just watches, though. I'm not having that."

"It's fine," Lestrade said, exchanging a look with Sherlock. "We don't have to do anything. We're just talking. We can talk in bed, and see what happens, can’t we? See how it goes.”

*  
It went _incredibly badly_. None of them knew quite where to look, or where to touch; Sherlock insisted on making loud suggestions using clinical terms that made Lestrade wince; there were far more limbs in the bed than anyone knew what to do with; and John started laughing nervously and couldn’t stop until he got the hiccups, which finally killed the mood entirely. None of them had been able to get more than half-hard, anyway.

“This is horrible,” Sherlock announced finally. “Ouch, get off, my leg’s going numb. I don’t see why you wouldn’t just let me watch the two of you.”

“Because that would be creepy,” John told him.

“Prude.”

“Freak,” John said, and Sherlock got up and stalked out of the room, very dignified and tall, wearing nothing.

“Oh, god,” John sighed, and started to get up and go after him, but Lestrade held him back.

“Cool off for a minute,” he suggested.

“I can’t believe you thought this would be an okay idea.” John shrugged him off and went to put on pants and a t-shirt.

“I’m sort of shocked you’re having such a problem with it,” Lestrade admitted, lying back on the pillows, hands behind his head, watching John with a frown. “I mean, you’re the one who-- All right. Never mind. You were right, fine, it wasn’t a good idea.”

“Do you really think we’re in a three-way relationship with him?”

“I wasn’t calling it that, but...in what way are we not?”

“You’re my boyfriend,” John said angrily. “Sherlock is Sherlock. I don’t want to think of it that way.”

Lestrade spread his hands. “Then don’t think of it that way. He clearly does, though. Honestly, I’m incredibly flattered.”

John shot him an exasperated look and went down to Sherlock’s room. The door was half open, and Sherlock was lying flat on his bed--clothed, thank god--making evil sounds on his violin. John sat down on the edge of the bed at a polite distance and waited for him to stop.

“It doesn’t make any _sense_ ,” Sherlock said, breaking off in the middle of a shriek.

“No, it doesn’t,” John agreed. “I’m really, really sorry, love.”

“Don’t touch me,” Sherlock said, when John stretched out a tentative hand. “I feel like I’m nothing but nerve endings and skin right now. It’s intolerable.”

“All right,” said John, and leaned back against the headboard, closing his eyes. “Do you want me to stay? Or go?”

“I don’t care,” Sherlock said sullenly, and picked up his violin again, but not the bow, this time; he lay on his back and plucked meditative arpeggios until John drowsed off there. At some point Lestrade came downstairs, took the violin from Sherlock’s unprotesting hands, put out the light, and wedged himself in between them to fall asleep with his head in John’s lap.

*

Lestrade and John argued the next day, sort of, when John went to his flat after work. John said, not really joking, that he was tired of Lestrade’s being so saintly and well-adjusted all the time, and Lestrade said he thought perhaps they ought to spend some time apart until John had worked out what he wanted and from whom. John couldn’t say what he thought of that without shouting, and he didn’t want to hit anything, so he said “All right, phone you in a few days, then,” very clipped and pale, and went home.

Sherlock closed the laptop quickly when John came in. “What is it? More positioning research?” John demanded, and limped over to open the computer back up. Sherlock didn’t try to stop him. It wasn’t porn he’d been looking at. Some sort of mathematics site. Lines, points, vectors and graphs. John glanced down and saw that Sherlock had been taking notes, pages and pages of notes with rough geometrical designs sketched out, scribbled over angrily, notated and labeled carefully with English and Greek letters in Sherlock’s neat, minute handwriting. Sherlock moved his hands to cover the pages, then stopped and forced his hands back down into his own lap, enduring John’s puzzled silence.

“This is...” John picked up one of the papers. “Wow. This is, is this supposed to be...us?”

“It doesn’t work,” Sherlock said. “It’s an impossible shape.”

“I don’t think you can calculate relationships that way,” John told him gently.

“I know that, you idiot.” Sherlock snatched the page back from him, wadded it up and chucked it viciously into the bin by the desk. “It’s soothing to try and put it in those terms, that’s all. Or, anyway, it was at first. Until all the angles started going wrong. Now it’s nothing but a nightmare and a headache. Very apt, I’d say.” He got up and fetched his coat.

“Where are you going?”

“Out,” Sherlock said, and left.

John stayed at the desk studying the remaining sketches and equations, forgetting to sit down until his leg gave out beneath him, and then he collapsed involuntarily into the chair and kept looking, fascinated. Numbers and angles and degrees, isosceles and scalene, sine and cosine and tangent. Ages in years and days, heights in centimetres, months in service, number of cases solved, other notations John couldn’t identify. Penis sizes, probably; he wouldn’t put it past him. _J=90, S=190, G=150._ IQs? He hoped not. Anyway, too obvious. Eventually he sighed and shoved back the chair and went to rummage in the kitchen for last night’s leftovers.

*

Sherlock found another case, after another few days of tension and slammed doors. It was one of those cases that involved long consultations with men who smoked cigars and kept country houses with servants. He didn’t ask John to come along on this one, but he told him about it, bits of it, when it was all over and John was putting six careful stitches in his calf: old cellar in the woods, servants’ intrigue, two dead bodies, long-hidden treasure.

“You’re making this up,” John said, although knowing Sherlock’s typical cases, he probably wasn’t. “How’d you get so bashed up, then?”

“Fell into the cellar.”

“Right,” said John. “Anything else? Let me see.” He expected resistance, but Sherlock shed his shirt readily enough, and remained thoroughly docile while John cleaned some of the deeper scratches on his sides and back.

“You have the best hands of anyone,” Sherlock said complacently, arching into John’s touch. John glanced up at Sherlock’s face, frowning; his pupils were dilated, but apparently the same size.

“Cracked your skull, too? Follow my finger with your eyes. No, don’t turn your head, just--”

Sherlock turned his head and kissed him, lips soft and warm against his jaw.

“Oh,” said John.

“Why does it have to be a huge thing?” said Sherlock. “I’m in a good mood. I like you, and you feel nice.”

“You’re case-sexual,” John decided, moving away and putting his supplies back into his bag.

“Ha, ha.”

“Do you think of me as your boyfriend?” John wanted to know. Sherlock made a face.

“I hate _labels_ ,” he said crossly.

“I know. I know. Well, what about this: You used to be...sort of this way with Lestrade, yeah?”

Sherlock didn’t deny it, but he looked wary, possibly on the edge of flight, perched on the edge of the bed with his pale shoulderblades held like nervous wings.

“But then you had sex, and it went badly, and you...well, split up, I suppose, in a manner of speaking. I’m just afraid that if we--”

“It didn’t go badly,” Sherlock looked mystified. “And we didn’t split up; I’m still ‘with’ Lestrade, aren’t I, _in a manner of speaking._ Why do orgasms have to define everything for you?”

“They don’t! I’m sorry. I didn’t...I’m only trying to understand.”

“This conversation has become boring and counter-productive,” Sherlock said, whipping on his shirt again, and swept out of the room.

He slept in John’s bed that night, though, for the first time since the whole mess had started. John woke from restless dreams to find a hand on his shoulder, pressing him gently back against the bed. He wasn’t sure if Sherlock had just come in or if he’d been there all along, but he stayed there, anyway, a collection of cool-skinned silent angles that shouldn’t have been comforting to sleep next to, but somehow was.

*

John’s quarrel with Lestrade didn’t last, because it couldn’t; John simply phoned him up about a week after they’d last spoken and said “Can I come over?” and Lestrade said “Wish you would; I’m starved for it,” and when John showed up at approximately twelve minutes later Lestrade had him up against a wall even before the flat door had shut behind him, hands inside John’s clothes, kissing the breath out of him.

*

John told him about the conversation with Sherlock. “We’re like weapons,” John said, fingers lightly tracing at the edges of hard scar tissue. “All three of us, I suppose. We don’t have a good use when no one’s in danger, we’re just...hurtful.”

“That’s the worst analogy I’ve ever heard,” Lestrade complained, capturing John’s hand and relocating it to his hipbone, where it clasped in a grateful grip. “What are you, then? A gun, I suppose? And I’m a...what, a hunting dog? and he’s a, a knife?”

“Acid,” John said. “Burns through everything he touches.”

“Oh. That’s good, actually. I could see that. Fine, I’ll be your dog, then. You can domesticate me.”

“Hmm. But you can’t domesticate a gun, can you?”

“You can put a jumper on it and try and teach it to blend in,” Lestrade said, fitting himself into the curve of John’s body, and John had to laugh.

He waited until he thought Lestrade might be asleep before saying, “I don’t know how I feel about him still, not really.”

“No?” Lestrade murmured, pulling John’s arm around himself more tightly. “’S all right. I do.”

“Know how I feel about him, or how you do?”

“Same thing,” Lestrade said, after a long sleepy pause. “More or less...”

John waited for more, but that was all, it seemed.

*

The next day Lestrade came home with him, after work. He brought along the files on a bank job that had been stopped in progress by the Met the previous week, and he and Sherlock spent the better part of two hours recreating the sequence of events on the kitchen table using cooked and uncooked pasta, tomato sauce, and most of the fixings for the salad John was trying to assemble. Sherlock was attempting to prove that one of the robbers had sabotaged the job on purpose, and Lestrade didn’t think he could have, and both of them kept calling to John to bring them different bits of food and kitchen utensils to use in their construction. Finally John got fed up and came in and swiped a handful of carrot slices off the table, crunching on them defiantly.

Lestrade looked crushed. “You’ve just eaten half the security staff of Barclays.”

“Useless buggers,” John said, and squinted at the mess they’d made of the tabletop, tilting his head. “Which Barclays? Piccadilly?”

“The Strand!” Sherlock shouted. “Are you blind?”

John studied it for a bit longer, then dipped Waterloo Bridge into the Thames and took a bite of it, causing them both to howl. A massive food fight ensued, with Sherlock and Lestrade both ganging up against John. The table was overturned, dinner was ruined, and they ended up getting takeaway yet again. A rather pleasant evening after all, John thought, watching Lestrade pick bits of arugula out of Sherlock’s hair when they were finally sprawled out exhausted in front of the telly.

Sherlock, watching him watch, settled his head down into Lestrade’s lap and his feet in John’s, then pulled out his phone and began to text, ignoring them both.

*

And so they muddled along. As three weapon-like people who sometimes shared a living space, they fit together messily: angles at odds, more often than not. They fell into a comfortable position only on occasion and by accident before jarring loose again with two- or three-way arguments. All of them worked long hours, though, and fortunately (John thought, guiltily) there was no shortage of crime in London, so it wasn’t very often that they had the leisure to get on one another’s nerves. They did work rather nicely together as a murder-solving team. Or a murder-solving detective and his two reasonably adequate assistants, as Sherlock would have it.

There were times, too, when they fit together in other ways. Not often. John got half-plastered, once, and let Lestrade stroke him off while Sherlock was in their bed. He kept his eyes closed for most of it, determined to narrow his perceptions down to the silky slide of Lestrade’s hand on him, Lestrade’s low voice murmuring encouragement into his ear. Only at the very end he heard Sherlock make a soft choked-off noise, and opened his eyes to find the two of them kissing, over his head. _Fuck that’s hot,_ John gasped out, and laughed as he came.

"Yeah, that's--oh, god," Lestrade whimpered, straining hard against John's hip.

"Beautiful," Sherlock murmured approvingly.

"Now you?” John asked, when he’d got his voice back.

“No,” Sherlock said, heavy-eyed with pleasure, breathing warmly into John’s hair. “I’m good.”


	7. Home Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sick!John is determined to spend Christmas on his own this year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of holiday fluff as requested by smallhobbit and basaltgrrl.

“I’m fine,” John told Lestrade on the phone, for about the tenth time. “Really. Change of plans, that’s all. I’m not even that ill--just needed a good excuse not to see Harry at Christmas this year.”

“Right,” Lestrade said. “Fine. That’s reassuring. So...I’ll just stop and look in on you on my way to the train, shall I? It’s on the way. What do you need? Soup? Tissues? Hand job?”

John didn’t even attempt a laugh. “No, I’ve told you, don’t come down here. I mean it, I won’t answer the door to you if you do. You don’t want to bring the dreaded lurgy up to your sister and her kids, do you? Anyway, I’m disgusting right now. I’ll be no fun at all. You’re well out of it.”

“I don’t care about _that_ ,” Lestrade said. “I’ll phone Anne and tell her I’m staying in London. I don’t mind. Catch up with them at New Year’s instead. I just want to make sure you’re--”

“I am _fine_.” John sounded seriously annoyed now. “The last thing I want is you fussing at me while I’m trying to get some rest. I don’t need anything, and if I do, I’ve got Sherlock. He’s only going to his family’s for Christmas dinner. Just...leave it. Go. I really don’t want you here.”

Lestrade went quiet. “All right,” he said. “That’s...yeah, sure, fine, I’ll phone you when I get to Anne’s. Or when I get back. Take care.” He hung up and sat back at his desk, frowning, trying not to think about Sherlock bringing John blankets and Lemsips for the next few days. Watching bad television with him. Playing bloody Christmas carols on the bloody violin for him, no doubt, that long-fingered elegant _bastard_.

*

“Is it catching?” Sherlock asked apprehensively from John’s bedroom doorway. “You look disgusting. You’re not going to need me to _bring_ you things, are you? I was planning on taking an early train to my mother’s tonight.”

“Yes, go,” John croaked without opening his eyes. “Go away, Sherlock. I don’t need things. I need sleep.”

“Because I really don’t want to get ill again right now,” Sherlock said. “The last time was awful.” He reached out to fiddle with the door handle, then appeared to think better of it and put his hands behind his back instead.

“Christ, yes,” John agreed with feeling. “You’re horrible when you’re ill.”

Sherlock looked hurt.

“Go, go away, go,” John repeated. “I refuse to have this conversation. If you don’t go then I will. This is probably the least restful residence in all of London, when you’re in it.”

“You’re being uncharacteristically blunt and bad-tempered.” Sherlock narrowed his eyes at John. “How ill are you? Are you all right to be left on your own?”

“Doctor,” John said, pointing to himself.

“Yes, I _realise_ , but--”

“It’s a virus, I’ve treated approximately nine hundred people with it in the past week alone, I am going to do nothing but drink tea and sleep for the next two days and that will be the end of it,” John said wearily. “And Lestrade’s offered to stay home from his sister’s. I’m sure he’ll be round.”

“You’ll infect him.”

“Don’t care. He’s not horrible to look after.”

“Fine,” Sherlock snapped. “I’ll be back Boxing Day night. Probably. Have a lovely time on your own with Lestrade.” He turned on his heel and stalked away, and there were sounds of vehement hand-washing a few moments later.

*

John spent all of Christmas Eve and most of Christmas morning in the loo wishing he were dead and congratulating himself on having spared Sherlock and Lestrade the misery of a similar fate. Or the misery of having to clean up after him. Or both. True, they were now both upset with him and wildly jealous of each other, but it was for the best, he thought. Anyway they’d work it out again when they got back. Possibly while dealing with his remains. John groaned, and wished his gun weren’t all the way down the hall. He contemplated drowning himself in the toilet bowl--no, too disgusting--perhaps the sink?--but fell asleep on the bath mat before he could follow through with the plan.

When he woke early in the afternoon, his insides seemed to have finally settled down and were no longer attempting to escape from his body. He thought he might just try for a piece of toast and a cup of weak tea, but was so wrung out that he had to stop and sit with his head between his knees in the middle of the stairs, and then fell into a half-doze on the sofa again while resting up after the long journey. Tea and toast began to seem far too much bother.

One of them might have at least _tried_ to phone and check in on him, he thought petulantly, self-pityingly, forgetting that he’d left his mobile upstairs on vibrate in his dressing-gown pocket.

*

Lestrade finally gave in at around two in the afternoon and rang Sherlock. “Sorry, but John’s not picking up his phone. How is he? Can I speak to him?”

“Yes, and a Merry Christmas to you, too,” Sherlock said irritably. “I was just about to phone you and ask the same thing. He’s sent you packing, too, I presume?”

*

"You are in unbelievable amounts of trouble," Lestrade was saying, when John woke again that evening. "I could bring you up on charges for this. I might do, soon as you're well. Wrongful...something."

"Your hands are cold," John said from his drowsy haze. "No, bring them back, they were nice--"

"Budge over," Sherlock said, shoving at John's head so he could flop down on the sofa next to him and put his feet up on the ottoman. "God, I hate traveling at Christmas. Half the train was drunk." He pulled John's head back roughly onto his lap and melted into the cushions with a loud sigh. "Speaking of which. Lestrade, are you making tea with whisky in?

"I am making whisky with whisky in," Lestrade called from the kitchen.

"I'm probably still contagious," John protested.

"Don't care," said Sherlock. "Not moving. I hope I do get ill; you deserve it. Where's the remote?"

"Hey," Lestrade said, and John opened his eyes to find him kneeling next to the sofa. "Christmas dinner for you here. Paracetamol and water. Have you been keeping anything down? You look like death."

"You look gorgeous," John said. "Did you get to eat?"

"Anne sent me home with half the contents of her kitchen."

"Smells...bearable," John murmured. "I might even want some of it, in about a week."

"Too bad. I'm not sharing. And I'm giving all your presents away to charity. What are you smiling like that for? You think I don't mean it?" Lestrade had leaned in very close, close enough to knock his forehead against John's. "Git."

"Quit being soppy," Sherlock said, shoving at them both. "Doctor Who is on. I can't mock it properly when you're snogging in my lap."

"Oh, fine," Lestrade said. He turned around and leaned his head back against the two of them, sprawled out on the floor still in his coat, and they all settled in to watch.


	8. Three-way Calling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John is out of town, leaving Sherlock to decide what best to do with a wet, tired, out-of-sorts Lestrade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for drinkingcocoa for her donation to the [Fandom Aid](http://fandomaid.livejournal.com/) auction in aid of those affected by Superstorm Sandy. Thanks very much to her for all the ideas and patience, and to fengirl88, king_touchy, and ollipop for beta-reading.
> 
> This chapter is rated NC-17.

Lestrade was soaked to the skin by the time his shift ended. He dripped up the stairs to 221B, leaving his shoes and coat in a sodden pile in the hall, and headed straight for the bath, unbuttoning his shirt with stiffened fingers and praying that there wouldn’t be any experiments in the tub. There weren’t, for a mercy. He turned the shower on as hot as it would go, grimaced at the unpleasantness of peeling off cold wet trousers and socks, and finally stepped, sighing, into the embrace of warm water and steam.

He didn’t want to get out. If John were home, he’d be waiting outside the door with tea, he’d fuss and scold and bring him an extra towel for his hair...bully him into dry clothes...or maybe dispense with the clothes and climb under the duvet with him to warm him up...

A loud knock at the door made him jump and hit his head on the shower nozzle. “I'm coming in,” Sherlock announced, letting in a burst of freezing air from the hall. “You've been in here for ages and I've had three cups of tea this evening. Avert your ears if you're feeling prudish about bodily functions.”

Lestrade touched his head gingerly where he'd just banged it and bit back a few curses; he didn't feel particularly up to trading verbal jabs with Sherlock. He turned off the taps quickly when he heard the toilet flush and waited, shivering, for the door to close again.

Instead, a towel appeared around the edge of the shower curtain. “You've left a massive puddle on the floor,” Sherlock told him. “All for nothing, apparently; that body you just spent five hours looking at was a suicide. The mud on your trousers can't be from anywhere but under Bankside Pier, and that's where all the leapers wash up.”

“I'm well aware,” Lestrade said. “Still have to investigate, though, don't we? Could I get two more minutes of privacy here?”

“If you wanted privacy you'd have gone back to your own flat.”

Lestrade, drying off behind the shower curtain, thought about his own flat: silent and cold and devoid of mess. “Thought you’d be out,” he said. He wrapped the damp towel around his waist and stepped out of the bath. “Go away,” he suggested, without much hope.

Sherlock trailed after him into John’s room and threw himself down on the bed, and Lestrade sighed and resigned himself to being observed. He shed his towel, decided not to bother with pyjamas, and got under the duvet on the other side.

After what felt like a long time, but was probably only about two or three minutes, Lestrade opened his eyes and looked over to find Sherlock lying tranquilly on his back, staring at the ceiling, fingers steepled at his lips. 

“Sherlock, _why_ ,” Lestrade said finally. “Why are you--will you _please_ leave?”

“John asked me to look after you while he was away,” Sherlock told him. “Do you need food?”

“That complete bastard. No, I had chips on the way home. And don’t tell him that. I don’t need anything, Sherlock. I’m tired and I’m going to sleep.”

“It’s nine o’clock. What about sex?”

“Jesus bloody _Christ_.” Lestrade put his hands over his face.

“You and John have sex, on average, three times a week,” Sherlock said. “He’s been gone for four days. And you didn’t masturbate in the shower just now. I’m not averse to the idea.”

Lestrade had to laugh. “Not averse,” he repeated, and then reflected that for Sherlock, that probably amounted to an ardent come-on. He lifted his hands away from his face and found Sherlock surveying him keenly, eyes traveling over his neck and shoulders and down to the exposed upper half of his chest.

It was true, he’d been thinking in the shower about getting naked into John’s bed and having a good long dirty wank, perhaps with his face buried in the pillow that would have still smelled like John if Sherlock weren’t currently lying on it. Now he thought about Sherlock watching him do it--Sherlock mainly liked to watch--and felt his skin begin to heat up in a warm glow. _Not_ a blush. 

He reached for his mobile beside the bed and dialed one-handed. “Hi,” he said, when John picked up. “I miss you. Where are you? How was the wedding?”

“Oh,” John said. “You know. Wedding-y. Miss you too. I’m just back at the hotel. What’s wrong?”

“Sherlock’s propositioning me,” Lestrade said, watching Sherlock, who was propped on one elbow now, studying the newly bared bit of his torso where the duvet had slipped when he’d reached for the phone. He pulled it back up. “I thought you should know.”

“Oh,” John said again, but in an entirely different voice. “Really? That’s...”

“Isn’t it?” Lestrade agreed, and Sherlock gave an exasperated sigh and grabbed the phone away from him.

“I just want to borrow him for a bit,” he informed John. “I’m not planning on _stealing him away_ from you. You’re not using him at the moment; do you mind?”

“He’s not a pocket knife, Sherlock,” Lestrade heard John say, but he sounded more amused than anything. “He may not want to be used. And, I don’t know, it’s a bit...we haven’t, you’ve never...it’s a bit unusual, isn’t it? Put him on again, will you? I know you can still hear me.”

“Thought he’d leave off if I phoned you,” Lestrade apologised. “I’ve no idea what he’s playing at.”

“Well,” John said. “Huh. I don’t mind, I suppose, if anything...sorry, just thinking; it’s a bit of a turn-on, actually. Do you, I mean, is this something you want to happen?”

“I don’t know,” Lestrade said, but the interested note in John’s voice made him flush again, and he felt his heart rate kick up a notch or two. He looked at Sherlock, who met his gaze steadily for a moment and then smirked, drawing the duvet down slowly, stopping when it reached Lestrade’s waist. Lestrade didn’t protest. “Er,” he told John. “Maybe?” He caught his breath as Sherlock traced one long, careful finger down the centre of his chest. 

“What’s he doing?” John asked. 

“Touching my scars. Looking at me like I’m laid out on a slab. Think he’s going to whip out a magnifier in a minute here.” 

“Mm,” John said. “Could I...would you mind if I stay on the phone? This sounds much better than pay-per-view hotel room porn.”

“Fine with me,” Sherlock said. He was busy studying Lestrade’s lower ribs where he’d caught an elbow during a rough arrest six days before, and he pressed at the fading bruise, glancing up to see Lestrade’s reaction.

“Ow,” said Lestrade. “Not sexy, Sherlock.” It was for Sherlock, though, quite possibly, he realised. “What’s got into you, anyway?”

Sherlock shrugged. “Bored. Curious. Give me the phone.”

“Tell him to hang on a minute,” John said. “Lestrade? You’re all right with this?”

“For now,” Lestrade said, up on his elbows, looking at Sherlock, who was studying his body in a predatory sort of way again, fingers skimming over every imperfection, making him shiver.

“What’s he doing now?” 

Sherlock took the phone, for which Lestrade was profoundly grateful; he was beginning to warm to the idea of this, but he didn’t much fancy narrating it. “Just looking,” Sherlock told John. “Touching a bit. Above the waist so far.” He lifted the duvet and looked. “It’s giving him an erection. Well. The start of one, anyway."

“Don’t touch it yet,” Lestrade heard John say, tinny and distant through the phone. 

“Tell me what to do, then.” Sherlock’s eyes were on Lestrade’s face, but he was speaking to John.

Silence on the other end of the line. Lestrade bit his lower lip. He wasn't used to being this passive during sex, but it was definitely doing something for him, being discussed like this by the two of them.

“Nipples,” John said. “Play with them, pinch them. Gentle at first, then get a little rougher. Give the phone to Lestrade. I want to talk to him again.”

“John,” Lestrade said, gripping the phone, which was beginning to seem the only solid thing in existence in a world gone mad. He shut his eyes. Sherlock’s fingers were cold, delicate, nothing at all like John’s. “God, this is weird.”

“Too weird?” John asked. “Still okay?” His voice had gone low and rough, and Lestrade imagined him lying on his hotel bed with a hand on his stomach, fingers just beginning to dip down inside his trousers.

“Still okay,” Lestrade managed. Sex with Sherlock was always weird, on the rare occasions he decided to get involved--maybe half a dozen times over the past year, Lestrade reckoned. Sherlock liked to watch Lestrade touching John, and sometimes liked to be touched by John, but that was usually as far as it went. “All right by you? Oh--that’s--” Sherlock was pinching briskly now where John would have pressed gently, and Lestrade’s hips jerked in response. 

Sherlock took the phone from him again. “He likes that,” he reported to John, sounding clinically pleased. “Can I use my mouth?”

“God, yes,” Lestrade could hear John say, rather breathlessly. “Suck hard but don’t bite; he’s sensitive there. Fuck, this is turning me on, you have no idea.”

Lestrade tipped his chin toward the ceiling and made inarticulate sounds as Sherlock began to tease at his left nipple, circling it with his tongue-tip a few times before fastening his lips around it and giving him a good hard suck.

“Talk to me, one of you,” John pleaded, but Sherlock’s mouth was busy and Lestrade’s brain had all but shorted out. His hips were moving restlessly now, making him grow harder and harder as he rubbed against the soft fabric of the duvet.

Sherlock pulled off, scraping a little with his teeth as he did so, and Lestrade groaned. “I'm putting you on speaker,” Sherlock told John. “What an odd taste. Musky. Bitter.” He flicked the wet nipple with his fingernail, watched Lestrade react, then bent to take the right one into his mouth, biting down gently and then pulling at it with his teeth. Lestrade bit back a yelp, and Sherlock looked up at him, eyes wicked, daring him to tell.

“ _Very_ sensitive,” Sherlock said. “Can he come just from this, do you suppose?”

“Oh god,” said Lestrade, squeezing his eyes shut again.

“Try it, yeah.” John’s voice had gone uneven and husky; he was surely stroking himself off now. Sherlock bent his head and began tonguing him again, fast firm flickers that went straight to Lestrade’s cock.

He whimpered--fucking whimpered, like a puppy, he'd never live this down, he thought with a flash of hot shame, but there was an appreciative moan from his mobile in response.

“Make some noise, yeah, come on,” John coaxed, and when Sherlock bit at him again he couldn't help it, he was making every stupid sound in the porn soundtrack lexicon now. Sherlock replaced his tongue with his thumb, grinding it round in firm circles, and Lestrade began to writhe and buck, his mouth going wide in a silent shout.

“He’s quite lovely like this, isn’t he?” Sherlock said. “I think I need to kiss him, if you don’t mind.” He was breathing rapidly--Sherlock actually was getting turned on by this in his way, Lestrade realised, and the thought sent another sharp jolt of arousal down through him.

John made a pained sort of high-pitched sound, not in protest. “Please,” he said. “ _Jesus,_ Sherlock, yes.”

Sherlock dipped his head down and brushed his lips against Lestrade’s, tasting him carefully while he worked his nipples rapidly between finger and thumb with increasingly insistent little tugs. “Oh,” Lestrade said, gasping into Sherlock’s mouth. “I’m, fuck, I’m coming--John--” He kept his eyes shut, knowing Sherlock was watching him intently; it was part of what was sending him over the edge. He felt stripped to the bone even before Sherlock lifted the duvet again to observe him as he thrust against air and began to throb and spurt untouched.

“Confirmed,” Sherlock said, and through the ringing in his ears Lestrade could hear John give a shuddery cut-off moan that Lestrade knew intimately--it hurt, suddenly, not having him right there with them, and Lestrade grasped blindly for the phone and took it off speaker.

“I’ll get a flannel,” Sherlock said, getting up.

“Fuck,” Lestrade said, still shaking with the sudden intensity of the last few minutes, struggling to recover.

“That's...well, yeah. Basically. Yes. Fuck,” John agreed.

They breathed at each other for a minute, soft huffs of sound, almost laughing. 

“Is he all right?” John wanted to know. “I mean...nothing surprises me any more, not really, but what the hell was that?"

“Haven’t the slightest,” Lestrade said. “This is what you get for telling him to look after me, I suppose.”

“What?” Lestrade would have expected a denial in any case, but John sounded genuinely confused. “No. I wouldn’t tell him to look after a goldfish, let alone--”

Sherlock re-entered the room, dropped a cold, damp flannel on Lestrade’s stomach, and plucked the phone from his hand. “Yes, enough meaningless pillow talk, I think. Interesting experiment, talk more soon, enjoy the rest of your holiday, bye now.” He disconnected the call, then turned the mobile off.

Lestrade just looked at him. “You could have just made me a cup of tea, you know,” he said finally.

“You're afraid of my tea,” Sherlock reminded him. “And it _was_ interesting.”

“Come here.” Lestrade shifted over on the bed.

Sherlock looked undecided. 

“Oh, come on. I’ll be asleep in ten minutes and you can go and do what you like.” 

Even then he didn’t expect anything, but Sherlock switched off the light and got into bed with him after a moment or two, still fully dressed. He must have been missing John, Lestrade thought, and then Sherlock moved hesitantly closer, arm round his waist, nose at his neck. 

“You’re less annoying than most people,” Sherlock explained. “And there was that case last week. With the rug. You handled that quite well.”

Lestrade shifted round uneasily to try and see his face in the dark. “What, so you decided to reward me with sex? Is this your idea of behavioural conditioning, or--?”

Sherlock gave a cross-sounding sigh. “Competence arouses me. You’re not unattractive. Stop talking, you’ll spoil it. Go to sleep.”

***

_What was that about?_ John texted him, the next morning.

_I moved a rug competently and I’m not unattractive,_ Lestrade responded. 

_Sounds like love,_ John texted back. _Tell him I said hands off till I get home._

_Ooh, jealous?_ Lestrade typed, grinning.

_N, just want 2 watch next time. Back tmrw. Be less competent till then._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Banner for thirdbird's Not Your Average Threesome 'Verse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/570527) by [Neffie (originalneffie)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/originalneffie/pseuds/Neffie)




End file.
